Sang Woo Kim’s Search for the Self

Sang Woo Kim b. 1994, South Korea Follow +

Sang Woo Kim was just ten years old when he told his mother he wanted to be an artist. ‘I remember it so vividly,’ Kim tells Ocula. ‘She was washing dishes, and when the words left my mouth, an overwhelming silence filled the room. She just kept going as if I hadn’t said a thing. That only fuelled my desire.’

Kim, who was born in Seoul and raised in London, didn’t yet fully grasp what being an artist meant, but knew he loved to create. ‘It was less about understanding and more about feeling, and that has stayed with me,’ he says.

For the first time in London, Kim’s paintings and pigment dye works are presented together in his solo show, The Seer, The Seen, across Herald St’s Bethnal Green and Museum Street galleries. Here, Kim guides us on a journey of self-perception, exploring the facets of identity as seen from the inside and outside, and across time.

Portraiture became an outlet through which to explore some of these feelings. Made predominantly with oils on canvas, Kim’s self-portraits—which range from extreme close-up, cropped views of his features to fuller, more zoomed out portrayals—offer glimpses of the artist’s evolving sense of self.

Central to these works is Kim’s desire to ‘reclaim agency’ over racialisation as a Korean man in British society, a subjectivity further complicated by Kim’s experience working as a model, where an otherness was imposed upon him under the Western gaze.

‘In the past, I struggled with modelling and felt conflicted over the fetishisation of image and identity. It contributed to the narrative of racial otherness imposed upon me, a path that was determined for me by the Western gaze,’ Kim says. ‘Creating these self-portraits allows me to confront my own insecurities and reclaim my sense of self in a world that judges through a lens of racial prejudice and bias.’

‘We are never the same person each day, always shifting and adapting,’ Kim reflects. It’s a sentiment evident in his paintings, with each holding the emotion and energy of a specific day as seen through intimate fragments of his visage, embodying raw moments of transformation.

Kim observes how ‘through the act of painting with my own hands, I am able to portray myself as I am, with the freedom of any style or scale that I want to paint myself’.

In The Corner 012 (2024), Kim’s eye commands the top right corner with photorealistic precision, where every fine hair and pore is meticulously rendered, while his sharp jawline anchors the one opposite, leading the viewer to imagine what lies beyond the frame.

Contrastingly, The Fold 002 (2024) zooms in on a single eye within a pocket-sized canvas, while Closer 016 (2024) shifts to a broader view of Kim’s face in a more expressive style, with dripping paint softening the features. In You’re looking at me 007 (2024), dappled hues of green, red, and purple suggest bruising—a metaphorical wound or purposeful flaw.

Also on view are Kim’s pigment dye transfer works, which draw from manipulated social media images and photographs taken by friends in what the artist calls ‘a literal and symbolic confrontation with the gaze’. Ways of Seeing 010 (2024)—which resembles a film strip with five segments, each focusing on the eye—evokes an unsettling sense of voyeurism or surveillance.

In a world shaped by perception and—often tacit—societal judgement, Kim’s body of work explores the process of regaining and becoming one’s authentic self. They focus not just on the act of seeing, but on the vulnerability of being seen.

The Seer, The Seen is on view at Herald St’s Bethnal Green gallery from 14 November 2024 to 1 February 2025, and at 43 Museum Street from 14 November to 18 December 2024. —[O]

Main image: Sang Woo Kim, You're looking at me 005 (2024) (detail). Oil and acrylic on canvas, artist's frame. 41 x 51 x 3 cm. © Sang Woo Kim. Courtesy the artist and Herald St, London. Photo: Jackson White.