View of Normal Life, 2022, Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Heesoo Kim’s first solo exhibition, Normal Life is being held at Unit London from 9 Aug to 10 Sep 2022.

This exhibition explores our shared contemporary experience through portraiture. In what the artist defines as an “expression of the mundane”, Normal Life is an accumulation of everyday observations. Surrounded by a society that constantly grapples for recognition and success, Kim’s body of work subtly engages with the mild sense of insecurity that is engendered by an achievement driven world.

Having struggled with his own insecurities, Kim’s portraits act as a means to regain agency as the artist chooses to paint the stories of those around him, recording the feelings and emotions that connect us all. These portraits do not attach themselves to any specific sense of personhood; each figure, wiped clean of idiosyncrasies, could be anyone. Kim therefore encourages his viewers to project themselves onto his portraits, revelling in the conceivable meanings of our universal experience and presenting an ordinary that has the potential to be extraordinary.