Jan Yongdeok Lim is an artist from Seoul who lives and works in Utrecht. His work combines painting with installation to explore ambivalent identities and social memories.
He wants painting to resemble poetry. A single word, sentence, material, or image, how it calls him and how his/our memories talk to it, becomes a painting. His artistic approach lies in a careful examination of the oscillating boundaries surrounding discordance, disparity, and chaosmos, which defamiliarizes by disassembling and reassembling. For him reality thus becomes a flexible expanse. Nothing stands still or can be taken for granted. This perspective guides him as he traverses from introspection of personal identity to societal identities both as a subject and as an attitude within his paintings.
His most recent series “The Remnants” explores what's left behind: the abandoned, the spilled and the discarded - a daily news report, one morning poem, a small talk with a stranger, a fragment of a train of thought. He speculates that these interests he has developed stem from enduring the long pandemic. The work captures these things and moments in a concise and swift touch between abstract and figurative.
Currently lives and works in Berlin (DE)
Education
2015ㅤHKU University of the Arts Utrecht, Utrecht (NL),
ㅤㅤㅤMaster of Arts in Fine Art
2012ㅤSeoul National University, Seoul (KR),
ㅤㅤㅤMaster of Science in Clothing and Textiles
ㅤㅤㅤ- Aesthetics in Dress Lab.
2007ㅤKookmin University, Seoul (KR),
ㅤㅤㅤBachelor of Fine Arts
ㅤㅤㅤ- Major: Fashion Design / Minor: Painting
Selected Exhibitions / Performances / Researches
2023ㅤ‘Landwehrkanal’, Molt, Berlin (DE), group
2023ㅤ‘Open Studios’, GlogauAIR, Berlin (DE), group
2023ㅤ‘Pain In The Ass’, GlogauAIR window, Berlin (DE), solo
2022ㅤ‘The Second Hands’, MNAC, Bucharest (RO),
ㅤㅤㅤ performer/ researcher
2020ㅤ‘Boven de bank’, Gallery Logman, Utrecht (NL), group
2018ㅤ‘Spoor’, Pilotenkueche, Leipzig (DE), group
2018ㅤ‘Speech Bubble’, Alte Handelsschule, Leipzig (DE),
ㅤㅤㅤ group
2018ㅤ‘Rutschbahn’, Krudebude, Leipzig (DE), group
2018ㅤ‘I accept the cookies’, Kunstraumpingpong, Leipzig
ㅤㅤㅤ (DE), group
2018ㅤ‘This must be the Pacific Place’, Vriend van Bavink
ㅤㅤㅤ Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), group
2018ㅤ‘Disclosed #13: HONOLULU’, Het Wilde Weten,
ㅤㅤㅤ Rotterdam (NL), performer
2017ㅤ‘Open Studios’, SWK030, Utrecht (NL), group
2017ㅤ‘The Final Report Presentation’, The Creative Centre
ㅤㅤㅤ HERE, Stöðvarfjörður (IS), group
2017ㅤ‘To Seminar : Sleeper’, BAK basis voor actuele kunst,
ㅤㅤㅤ Utrecht (NL), performer/ researcher
2016ㅤ‘Rethinking HOME_Koneksi-Connectie’, Nieuw
ㅤㅤㅤ Dakota, Amsterdam (NL), performer
2015ㅤ‘Tomorrow, I may disappear’, MaHKU graduation
ㅤㅤㅤ show, Academiegalerie, Utrecht (NL), group
2015ㅤ‘Before you ask me to stay’, Pavilion Sala del Camino,
ㅤㅤㅤ 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (IT), group
2014ㅤ‘A Creature called Soft Machine’, IMPAKT Festival,
ㅤㅤㅤ Academiegalerie, Utrecht (NL), group
Residencies
2023ㅤGlogauAir, Berlin (DE)
2018ㅤPILOTENKUECHE, Leipzig (DE)
2017ㅤThe Creative Centre HERE, Stöðvarfjörður (IS)
On-site work
2021ㅤ‘Assumption of Mary’, Yeongun cathedral,
ㅤㅤㅤ Cheongju (KR)
2019ㅤ‘The Resurrection, At First Eye Contact’,
ㅤㅤㅤ Hwangan cathedral, Yeongdong (KR)