ART BASEL PARIS 2025

In the early 2000s, Kim set up a studio and home on the island of Jeju, which lies south of the Korean Peninsula, and its landscape became her main preoccupation – the ocean, the local floral, her own garden. Kim is well-known for her colourful landscapes, utilising the seolchae method. She studied painting at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and was a professor of Korean Painting at the same institution from 1993-2017 so is well-versed in traditional genres and techniques. And while Kim’s compositions contain a range of international influences, they can be understood in the lineage of sansuhwa 산수화, or Korean landscape painting (san meaning mountain, su meaning water) which emphasises communing with nature and is influenced by Taoism and Confucianism.

Notably, there are rarely people in her quiet, elegant paintings. Her panoramic views depict moments of contemplation, with elements part real and part imagined. While rarely spectacular or conspicuously dramatic, each one shows a vivid encounter with nature. Her paintings are about looking and personal connection to place, engaging with ideas around closeness – spiritually and physically – and the way it affects our vision. Their often wide-angled compositions push against the use of linear perspective in painting, which dominated European art from the Renaissance to the Impressionists. Instead, they take their cue from East Asian traditions in which sympathising with, rather than studying, the environment is the primary concern.

Kim Bohie 김보희 (b.1952) lives and works in Jeju, Korea. The natural world is the defining theme for Kim and the landscape of Jeju Island – the ocean, the local floral, her own garden – is the main subject of her paintings. Until 2017, she was a professor and museum director at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, and is well-versed in traditional Korean genres and techniques, often utilising them in her compositions. Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘Beyond’, The Modern Institute, Osborne Street, Glasgow (2024); ‘The Days’, Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeju; ‘Towards’, CAN Foundation, Seoul (2021); and ‘Towards’, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul (2020). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Indexing the Nature: From Near and Far Away’, Gallery Baton at No.9 Cork Street, London (2022); ‘Mountains, Rivers, and People: Eight Views and a Nine-Bend Streams of Gyeonggi’, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan (2015); ‘Garden’, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul (2014); and ‘A Form of Thinking - Rediscovery of Drawing’, Museum SAN, Wonju (2014). Her work is held in many public and private collections, including National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, Seoul Museum of Art, and Hyundai Arts Center, Ulsan.