Ki Soo is an upcoming Korean artist whose paintings and animations have been shown in many art venues in Korea and beyond. In 2007, he was crowned one of the five leading artists in Southeast Asia by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, which exhibited the five artists' work. His early work began with cut outs of near life-sized figures. More recently, he has developed a signature cartoon character that appears in many paintings, animations, and cut-out metal sculptures.
Kwon Ki Soo stayed at the JCVA in October, 2003, and said he found the residency and its setting heavenly. He was particularly inspired by the breathtaking view, the people he met, and the rites at the churches of the Old City. He felt that the juxtaposition of urban Jerusalem with the wild landscape of the Dead-Sea will likely show up in his next series, which was planned during his stay at the JCVA.
Donggree
Ki Soo's popular and seemingly light-hearted cartoon characters appear in several media in an endless array of situations and contexts. Whether painted on canvas in a naive manner and cut out, or set in large paintings, or designed as sculptures, or starring in richly varied animation films, they convey Ki Soo's complex social message through their many moods and associations. The caricature style is particularly popular in the contemporary art scene in the Far East. Ki Soo's own signature figure developed out of his earlier cut-outs of figures, which were painted with traditional ink on Korean hand-made paper and hung directly on the gallery wall. Ki Soo later captured these early figures' anonymity and transferred it to his signature cartoon character, a smile face with an attitude. This very 21st century figure is clearly a product of our times, but has an ongoing and visually explicit relationship with Far Eastern tradition. While he (or she) can be seen as an outgrowth of the tradition of lighthearted, contour-drawn caricatures that appeared in sketch books, woodcuts and paintings, he has no trouble walking in and out of old, stylized pen drawings, and melting into their traditionally drawn landscape.
