detail from "Untitled" ©Jun-Ah Kim

   The large, vibrant and intensely drawn works-on-paper of Jun-Ah Kim will be shown at Safe-T-Gallery in Dumbo, from October 19th to November 18th. The one-person show “Mind Control” will be the artist’s first in a commercial New York gallery. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Thursday, October 19th from 6 to 8 PM, to which all are invited.
  Jun-Ah Kim’s works in this show are large, abstract compositions on paper, dominated by long, thin, water-color pencil lines. These are obsessively drawn to produce a rich - thick layer of color and line over almost every inch of paper. The lines are sharp, and they become hypnotic pathways for the eyes, almost meditative in their repetition and slight variation. Because of the compelling activity of the lines, what might be considered the background of each piece is what the viewer concentrates on first. Only after swimming in the background do the eyes begin to fully understand the foreground imagery. There are painted lines or boxes, or in some instances grooves carved through the substrate, which may be abstract or may represent the outlines of everyday objects, but they gain their visual power as they begin to be seen as the visual resolution of the chords of swirling lines and colors that underlying them. Ms. Kim writes, “I want to show two worlds, the real world that people believe and the hypnotized world that I live in upon the swirling lines.”
  Jun-Ah Kim is a recent graduate of the MFA program in painting at the Pratt Institute, and has a BA in painting from Chugye University for the Arts in Seoul, Korea.