The paintings displayed in this single row are 52 works from the “Sunday Paintings” series that Byron Kim began in 2001, painted between February 2020 and February 2021. While the title of the series is also reminiscent of the amateurism of the term “Sunday painter,” it actually captures how Kim paints the sky every week and writes a short text describing his feelings on that day. During the unprecedented period when COVID-19 was spreading around the world and the future was uncertain, we can see how Kim spent his time in a sincere and earnest manner while finding himself conflicted and torn between his personal interests, such as family, friends, and his own artwork, and various social movements such as the California wildfires, the U.S. presidential election, and vaccinations. These paintings of the sky also remind us that we all live under the same sky, no matter where we are in the world or what our circumstances may be, as if we were peering through a small window of memory.

Korean-American Byron Kim attracted attention at the 1993 Whitney Biennial in the U.S. with Synecdoche, in which he condensed the notion of racial diversity into hundreds of panel paintings of different skin tones, and displayed them in a grid pattern. This series, which can be described as a group portrait, continues to this day. The influence of On Kawaraʼs “Today” series (1966–2013), in which the artist painted the date each day, as well as his series of postcard messages can also be seen in these ongoing works based on a fixed concept.

Kimʼs Sunday Paintings are emotional works that resonate quietly with the subtleties of the heart, while inheriting the aesthetic of both Minimal and Conceptual Art.

Selected Exhibition

1993

Whitney Biennial, New York, USA

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Sunday Painting, 2020－2021
• Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan
• Photo: ToLoLo studio

Exhibition