Gyae Kim
**In the Name of**, 2025, 48” x 36”, Acrylic on canvas

Every day, we encounter countless images. They appear on our phones, move across our screens, and disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. Photographs, advertisements, screenshots, memories, and visual fragments accumulate into an endless flow of information that increasingly shapes how we experience the world. Yet despite their influence, these images remain fundamentally intangible, existing within digital space without weight, texture, or permanence.

For artist Gyae Kim, this condition has become a central point of inquiry. His paintings begin with fragments gathered from the internet, what she often describes as digital waste, and transform them into physical objects that occupy real space. Through layered compositions, tactile surfaces, and a visual language informed by contemporary screen culture, Kim explores what happens when fleeting digital images are given a body.

Rather than treating painting as a medium of representation, she approaches it as a process of translation. Images that once existed only within the virtual realm are slowed down, materialised, and reintroduced into the physical world. In doing so, her work reflects on the increasingly blurred boundaries between intimacy and surveillance, connection and isolation, virtual experience and physical presence.

In this conversation, Gyae Kim discusses the origins of her practice, her fascination with digital fragments, and how painting can offer a temporary resting place for images that would otherwise remain suspended within the endless circulation of contemporary visual culture.

Arthoods: Your works feel both digital and deeply physical at the same time. How did this visual language first develop for you?

Gyae Kim: To me, an image is something that inherently lacks physicality. Since I primarily encounter images in a digital space, I’ve always perceived them as weightless projections or existing within a digital space without a fixed form. My visual language developed from a long standing question: how can I grant a physical body to something that is fundamentally intangible?

This question led me through various material experiments before I settled into my current painting practice. I explored fiber art, printmaking and installations as ways to test how these weightless visuals could occupy a physical space. Each medium was a different attempt to anchor the “slippery” nature of digital images into something we can actually touch and stand in front of. Currently, I find painting the most effective. By translating fluid, digital fragments onto a flat and graphic canvas, I am giving them a permanent home that serves as a portal between the virtual and the physical.

Arthoods: You often use found online images and “digital waste” within your practice. What attracts you to these fragments from the internet?

Gyae Kim: I find it difficult not to be interested in these images when we are constantly glued to our screens. Digital waste is the very element that composes our daily visual reality. I see myself as a voyeur in a relentless waterfall of imagery, pulling out specific fragments that stand out to me.

Arthoods: Your paintings seem to sit between beauty and discomfort, intimacy and surveillance. Are these tensions something you consciously explore?

Gyae Kim: I think these tensions mirror what we feel every day on social media. We admire the curated beauty that others display, but that admiration often carries an undercurrent of envy or a sense of loss. We feel a strange intimacy looking at the private memories of others, yet we eventually become wary of how blurred the line between connection and surveillance has become.

I don’t consciously intend to create specific tensions. However, because I borrow images from all corners of the digital world without censoring them, I believe these psychological layers surface naturally and inevitably.

Photograph provided by Gyae Kim - Inspiration

Arthoods: Many of your compositions feel layered like scrolling through memories, feeds, or browser tabs. Does the experience of being online influence the way you compose images?

Gyae Kim: Yes. I find a lot of inspiration in our daily visual habits, like having multiple windows open on a single screen or scrolling through a phone while watching TV. Those endless pop up screens and overlapping layers of information represent how we process reality now.

Arthoods: Texture plays an important role in your work, especially in translating digital imagery into something tactile. What interests you about that transformation?

Gyae Kim: I think of it as casting an image onto a physical mold or dressing an object that doesn’t actually exist. Since digital images are fundamentally weightless, I find it fascinating to give them a tangible skin.

As the image moves onto the canvas, certain layers are inevitably emphasized or softened, creating an unexpected “painterly” quality. This transition adds a new dimension that didn’t exist in the original digital form. I enjoy how these weightless fragments gain depth and physicality, eventually occupying the same reality that we do.

Arthoods: In a world where we consume endless images every day, what do you hope viewers experience when encountering your work physically in space?

Gyae Kim: In our daily lives, digital images are something we consume and discard in a split second. They are slippery and fleeting. When viewers stand in front of my work, I hope they experience a moment of staying, feeling images that once were weightless have finally settled into a physical home. This physical encounter transforms the painting into an interface where cyberspace and physical reality interact. By inviting viewers into this space where the virtual and the tangible collide, I want to unsettle familiar perceptions of reality. Ultimately, I hope it prompts them to reflect on how our instinctual desire to watch shapes not only what we see, but also how we live within contemporary visual culture.

What makes Gyae Kim's work particularly compelling is its ability to make the familiar feel strange again. The images that populate our daily lives often pass unnoticed, consumed in an endless cycle of scrolling and viewing. Through painting, Kim slows this process down, giving these fleeting fragments a new presence and permanence. Her work reminds us that even within the constant flow of contemporary image culture, there remains space for reflection, attention, and meaningful encounters with what we see.

At Arthoods, we are always drawn to artists who encourage us to look more closely at the world around us. Through her exploration of digital imagery, materiality, and contemporary visual culture, Gyae Kim offers a thoughtful perspective on how images shape our everyday experiences and how painting can transform them into something tangible and enduring.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Gyae Kim for generously sharing her time, thoughts, and photographs from his studio, working process, and sources of inspiration. These images offer a valuable glimpse into the spaces and moments behind the work, enriching our understanding of her artistic practice and the ideas that continue to inform it.

From Screen to Surface: The Art of Gyae Kim

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From Screen to Surface: The Art of Gyae Kim

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