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The Act of Seeing

My paintings explore how distance shapes the act of perception. The figures often seem to face one another, yet their gazes never fully meet.
Between them lies a fragile interval—a thin layer of air that holds both tension and stillness.
This subtle in-between space becomes the structural core of my work.

I collect images from photographs and fragments of memory, then reconfigure them through painting. In translation, the original scenes lose their specificity; what remains are traces of relation rather than narrative. Each work becomes a site where perception gathers and dissolves, revealing how emotion, distance, and observation coexist quietly within a single surface.

Painting, for me, is both an optical and conceptual device. Color, line, and surface operate at different speeds—sometimes aligning, sometimes slipping past one another—to create a sense of resistance and rhythm. Within this shifting field, distance is not only spatial but perceptual: a subtle thickness between figures, images, and the viewer’s gaze.

These works reflect on the instability of proximity—the way people share the same space yet remain separated by invisible boundaries of perception. By holding these fragile distances on the painted surface, I consider how seeing can function as both a connective and isolating act.

Ultimately, I think of painting as a reflective medium that turns vision back on itself. Through minimal gestures and restrained color, the work invites a slower form of looking—one that acknowledges perception as never fixed or neutral, but always shaped by the space between.

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Seungju Lim 2025 2024 2022 2021 Drawing Text About Contact

Seungju Lim

2025
2024
2022
2021

Drawing

Text

About
Contact