Byron Kim often works in an area one might call the abstract sublime. His work sits at the threshold of abstraction and representation, between conceptualism and pure painting. Kim’s best known work, Synecdoche, was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Comprising a grid of hundreds of panels depicting human skin color, the painting is both an abstract monochrome and a group portrait. Once a week since 2001, Kim has made a small painting of the sky on which he inscribes a few momentary thoughts.
Born in 1961, Kim is a Senior Critic at Yale University. He received a BA from Yale University in 1983 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1986. His work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; the M+ Museum, Hong Kong; the Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Norton Family Collection, Santa Monica, CA; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA. Byron Kim lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
