From Ashes to Canvas: Korean Painter Kim Jongsuk’s Florence Solo Show
Creatrip Team
a month ago
Korean Western-style painter Kim Jongsuk, who lost her studio and about 40 works in the 2019 Goseong wildfire, rebounds with a solo exhibition in Florence’s OnArt Gallery (July 11–22). Born in Sokcho in 1965, Kim—who held her first solo show at 50—immersed herself in the lives of Sokcho’s fishing community after the fire, depicting dockworkers and dried fish as equal subjects to explore “existential equivalence.” Her thickly layered, textured paintings evoke displacement and fragmented lives between departure and return. The Florence show, organized by Nam Daehyun of Pinodia (a cultural space in Sokcho), presents Kim’s resilient artistic spirit and aims to move international viewers with the dignity of Korea’s coastal laborers.
