LAST CHANCEKwang Hyun Kim: Flytrap Anthology

A solo show for the Korean artist reflecting Kim’s belief that we live within a paradox where we can be both predators and shelter for one another. Says the gallery: “despite this contradiction we continue to reach outward, to connect, to hope and to build meaning. The exhibition becomes a meditation on the delicate and wilful act of living, offering an intimate look at how desire, solitude, tenderness and contradiction coexist within every human heart …”

Kim’s father worked as a cartoonist, his mother as an illustrator, and he trained in traditional Korean painting: it’s no surprise his works are full of imagery, narrative and symbolism with a strong vein of spiritual iconography and a distinctive visual language. The flytrap recurring in these paintings is a metaphor that suggests the inevitability of wounding each other and the emotional tension between intimacy and self-protection; within this ecosystem Kim places long-standing characters Pipzin (representing intuition and inner clarity) and Gatak (who “moves endlessly between cultivation and desire, planting and harvesting, seeking and resisting”). Refined brushwork and layered acrylic surfaces heighten this emotional landscape.