'Bubbly Oddballs' (ceramics, glazes)
Hea R. Kim, is a South Korean-born Canadian immigrant and a multi-disciplinary artist who is interested in creating playful, thoughtful, and technically-sophisticated installations. Hea has exhibited her work in Montreal, Toronto and Republic of Korea.
At first glance, Kim's work can appear child-like and playful, but they are bizarrely sophisticated because of the labor involved and the concepts explored. For her, art is a creative arena where mythological, spiritual, and illusionary mindscapes mingle into dream worlds. Her artistic practice gravitates towards mixed media sculpture. She relies on various techniques within fibers and ceramics that she combines with mass produced objects. Through these various media, she is challenged to engage the philosophical limits of what craft and art are as well as what they could be. She intentionally scratches the established margins and boundaries within the art world by harmonizing subversive notions: low versus high art, illustration versus fine art, and traditional versus contemporary art. She is drawn to meshing the fantastical with the mundane, the heroic with the cute, and the bubbliness of popular culture with deeper social concerns.
