Heesoo Kim: On (Re)Discovering the Ordinary

Writer Insun Woo hears from artist Heesoo Kim about his search for universal truths, how his practice evolved from unexpected beginnings, and what lies behind the masks of his anonymous figures.

Two figures peek out from behind a curtain, their hands cautiously pressing into the fabric. Another gazes at the viewer with a cigarette held loosely in his hand, its smoke curling into a half-circle around his head. Working with muted palettes, minimal narrative, and figures that feel both familiar and unknowable, Heesoo Kim creates images that ask to be felt before they are understood; his paintings are not so much portraits as shapes and weights of a feeling that is near and gently persistent.

Though he has developed a uniquely captivating visual vocabulary, Kim didn’t set out to become a painter. While he grew up surrounded by images and objects – his father was both a photographer and an antiques collector – he never received formal training in art. “The truth is that I started out without much knowledge about modern and contemporary art,” he recalls. “I knew only a few famous painters, like Picasso, Matisse, and Van Gogh.”

After completing his studies in Advertising and Design at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, he spent his twenties working at a commercial photography studio, assisting with photoshoots of celebrities for magazines. There, he learned how to stage a scene, perfect the lighting, and assemble effortlessly chic outfits for models – and eventually grew tired of it all. “I’d joined the studio because I was always drawn to portrait photography, but I became disillusioned over time,” he says. “Being an introvert, I realised that I couldn’t easily connect with people I didn’t know well – which made it difficult to create images that I envisioned in my mind. I asked myself: What’s something I can do on my own, without having to rely on others to make?”

Painting emerged as an answer, and at the age of thirty, Kim left the studio to pursue this new response. “I was excited every single day. It felt as though I’d set off on an adventure – like Luffy did on a small boat in One Piece,” says Kim, referencing the Japanese anime he watched as a teenager.

For all the lightness in his heart, Kim’s practice was grounded in discipline. He researched, drew, and painted fiercely. “At that time, I also thought I started my journey as an artist quite late and was eager to create my own visual language,” reflects Kim. To sustain his momentum, he knew he needed to devote as much time as possible to the act of drawing and painting itself.

And so Normal Life – the title under which Kim continues to make work to this day – was born. More a structure for practice than a conceptual thesis, a way to hold routine and instinct at once, the title gave the artist the freedom to choose what to depict. “Under this title, I could paint whatever I saw or imagined in daily life,” he says. “I thanked the heavens for this revelation.”

This thread of practicality rooted in sincerity is central to how Kim has woven together his artistic language. The anonymous figures with neutral facial expressions and closed eyes, which have now become the artist’s signature style, arose less from a predetermined vision than from negotiating limitations as a self-taught artist, as well as his artistic inspirations.

“I used to copy my friends’ Facebook profile photos for practice. Some looked like them and some really didn’t,” he recalls with a laugh. He quickly realised that creating an exact likeness wasn’t where he felt most alive and began to let go of detail. The figures became less specific, and they started closing their eyes to invite projection from the viewer.

At the same time, Kim looked outward for artistic models that intuitively appealed to him. He cites modernist painters like Matisse and Picasso as his inspirations, especially for their use of bold colours and experimental perspectives, though he points to the Korean painter Suh Yongsun as his continued source of admiration and influence. “He is the reason I chose acrylic paint as my medium,” remarks Kim. “I found him by chance through an online search, but I’ve been returning to his work ever since. They are just incredible. They’re figurative, but there’s something abstract about them. They have an explosive energy.”

The process of building his own artistic language while remaining true to himself was far from easy. In 2017, nearly three years after he began painting full-time, Kim organised a week-long exhibition at a factory he rented with the help of his friends. “I did everything myself – painted the walls white, installed the rails, and built the partitions,” says Kim. “I even slept at the factory to open and close the exhibition each day, as I couldn’t afford to hire anyone.”

Kim was beginning to lose faith. “I’d told myself, if nothing comes out of this show, I’ll quit.” Yet, instead of marking an end, the exhibition became a turning point. He sold just enough work to pay off the debt he had accumulated over the years, and a curator from a gallery in Seoul contacted him soon after – a moment of quiet validation. “I felt a huge sense of relief, like I had found some clarity about how I could keep going.”

Today, Kim has established a painterly language that is distinctively his. While he continues to admire the bold colours and expressive forms of his artistic heroes, his own works take on a more muted register, pared down in palette and restrained in movement. Often set against textured, block-coloured backgrounds, these compositions recall his early work in commercial photography, where the figure was similarly isolated and brought into focus. But unlike commercial images, that glamorise their subjects to sell a product or fantasy, Kim’s resist spectacle. His characters appear emotionally opaque with neutral facial expressions. What emerges is not a portrait in the traditional sense, but a vessel in which many kinds of viewers might find themselves.

Untitled (Five Figures II) (2024), for example, presents six figures standing together in silence, suspended in a misty blue field. Their bodies, rendered in soft earthy tones, have the weight and texture of clay sculptures. Five keep their eyes closed, as if absorbed in private thought, while one almost confronts the viewer with her eyes wide open. The piece holds intimacy and separation at once, inviting the viewer to linger in the space between connection and withdrawal.

His most recent body of work, exhibited on Unit’s Voices platform under the subtitle Clichés, dives deeper into the fabric of daily life. After a brief illness in the winter of 2024, Kim found himself preoccupied by what he calls “the obvious” in life: love, rest, aging, companionship. These kinds of moments in life are often overlooked because of their ubiquity but feel newly significant when faced with life’s fragility. “I’m realising that ‘the cliché’ is actually what’s most important,” says Kim. “Throughout the past three to four months, I’ve been trying to focus on the natural, most routine things in both my daily life and practice.”

Two figures lie in bed, entwined in an embrace, blanketed in deep, palpable calm. These are the kinds of images Kim has returned to in the series. In Untitled (Couple I), the figures’ limbs wrap around each other until their bodies seem to merge into a single, abstract form. Rendered in dusky pinks and purples, the image evokes the quiet, multifaceted shades of love – tender, tangled, and gently absorbing.

In a landscape of contemporary art that often asks to be deciphered, Kim’s works perform differently. They open up a space and a moment – to rest, to feel, and to return to what has always been there. And with the abundance Normal Life has to offer, Kim has no reason to stop. Into his eighties – perhaps even nineties – he will keep tending to the small facets of ordinary life.