Platform: Heesoo Kim

On any given day in our universe the only indisputable shared experience is the passing of time; yet this collective experience repeatedly fails to unite us in the way it should, the stigma and anxieties tethered to the ageing process in fact induce the opposite effect, often causing us to withdraw from each other. In Kim's work, isolated individuals set against impenetrable black backgrounds represent the stark loneliness of individuality. With his singular portraiture, Kim is acknowledging that each person is 'an island', a separate entity that cannot be merged with another; however, the crucial point is that we exist as an archipelago, just as the individual paintings in the exhibition exist together as a 'body of work'.

In the archipelago of individual human existence the only constants are external factors that effect us all: the tides and winds of time that anchor us in the same eco-system. In Kim's mind, this universality is something to be cherished. Although his figures each clutch a symbolically withering plant, it is this notion of ephemerality that is the chink of light in the darkness, the golden thread that runs through human experience, paving the way for increased empathy and compassion. In addressing the darkness of the individual, Kim makes evident the light of such communal experience.

In all art forms - apart from perhaps work that is politically driven - art is at its best when it seeks to unify rather than divide; when the artist extends a hand through the canvas and invites you to walk the same routes of human experience, showing you that, whatever you think or feel, someone has been there before and someone will be there again. Kim’s work perfectly conveys these poignant and complex interactions between people, art and time.