New Talent: Eemyun Kang

I first came across Eemyun's work several years ago when three of her paintings were installed in the foyer of the Affordable Art Fair. At the time she was finishing off her BA at the Slade, where she graduated with first class honours on top of receiving a bursary, scholarship, and two other awards for her work.

Born in Pusan, South Korea, Eemyun is currently completing her postgraduate degree at the Royal Academy, where she has won two scholarships. Her paintings are extremely haunting - utterly hypnotic and often created on oversize panels. If only I had double-height ceilings that could accommodate them!

The Royal Academy recently had its Premiums 2008, which is a selection of the best contemporary work being produced by second year students studying at the Royal Academy Schools. Eemyun won two prizes on the opening night, including the most coveted award most promising artist as voted by her fellow students - a real honour!

When South Korea opened its first cultural centre in the UK earlier this year, Eemyun's work was selected for its permanent collection. She was also invited to present a painting for Paul Pieroni's recent show at Seventeen Gallery called What Can A Desert Island Do? This exhibition was based on Gilles Deleuze's musings on desert island allegory and its persistence in the western cultural imagination. The British imagination in particular, I think! Our way of indicating a prized possession is by claiming it as essential for survival on a desert island, after all.


Curator Ji Yoon Lee has written the following about Eemyun: "The artist explores the theme of transformation in a visceral manner. The subject matter in her work addresses the transformation of the physical body i.e. metamorphosis form one form to another, capturing the actual moment of change, conflict and chaos. the shapes which appear in her paintings are realigned to form a familiar shape".