Kim Kei is a painter, sculptor, and photographer who, for the last year and a half, has been working on the East side of Los Angeles. Kei’s delicate, highly realized renderings draw on a vibrant collection of bits and pieces of ephemera that she later assembles to serve as the source material for her paintings and photographs. Click the play button below to listen to Kei talk about her practice:
Kim cited an interesting influence after our talk – “The Shape of a Pocket” by John Berger. I hadn’t read this particular work by Berger, but upon flipping through a few of the pages, I stumbled across a passage that seemed salient to Kei’s working method:
“How did you become what you visibly are? asks the painter.
I am as I am. I’m waiting, replies the mountain or the mouse or the child.
What for?
For you, if you abandon everything else.
For how long?
For as long as it takes.”
Kei’s process of extended looking relates to a life approach of living in the present – a highly sophisticated method of interpreting transitory moments of fleeting beauty.
Be sure to see Kim’s work in person at her solo exhibition “Somewhere Between,” curated by C. Feign Jr. at Bustamante Gill Gallery, 2675 S La Cienega Blvd. in Culver City!
Art and Dinner in Los Angeles! 