Jinchul Kim 김 진철

BiographyJinchul Kim, a professor of art at Salisbury University, has been a resident of Maryland since 1996. Kim was born in South Korea and came to the U.S. in 1989. He earned a BFA and MFA from King Se-Jong University in Seoul, Korea, concentrating on painting. In 1993, he received another MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He shows his work internationally, including in locations like Korea, Japan, France, Spain, and the U.S. He has had 30 solo exhibitions in New York, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Seoul, and over 300 invitational shows and group exhibitions. He was selected as the Artist of the Year for 1986 by Art Journal magazine in Seoul, Korea. In 1995 he received “Phyllis H. Mason Grant” from the Art Students League of New York in New York City. He received the honor of the “Individual Artist Award,” a biannual statewide event from the Maryland State Art Council in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2006 and 2013. He also received the honor of “Artist Grant” from The George Sugarman Foundation in Novato, California, in 2005. Kim currently teaches Senior Seminar, 400 levels of painting and drawing classes at Salisbury University as a head of painting and drawing areas. In 2008 he earned the University System of Maryland’s highest faculty honor: the Regents Faculty Awards for Excellence in Teaching. The same year he also received the Salisbury University Distinguished Faculty Award in Teaching. The Fulton School of Liberal Arts also recognized him for Excellence in Teaching 2021-2022 from Salisbury University. In 2021, he was selected to paint the official portrait of Maryland’s First Lady, Yumi Hogan, by the Foundation for the Preservation of Government House of Maryland Inc. in Annapolis, Maryland.

Artist StatementI am interested in blurring the boundaries between things that we have concluded in predated aesthetics. I am very interested in constructing newer languages that can embrace/unite these preconceived definitions with innovative constructs. For this mission, I attentively engage my picture-making process through inventive personal semiotics. These semiotic connotations are melted into my work alongside the strong presence of formal strategies. I use the formal approach as a binder to build a robust architecture for the painting, whether the work is involved in abstract or representational environments. I hope to generate a dynamic for the viewer to participate in a game of reveal/conceal through newer compositions and contrasting the firm architecture of painting with the artifice of superficial beauty. Consequently, I often mingle around two-dimensional formats to kinetic structures and space to convey this creative freedom to merge these various presumptions around our lives. I often use figurative elements as vehicles to intensify the presence of common ground because we are all human at the end of the day.

Website Jinchul Kim