Space 776 will present a duo show featuring paintings by Japanese artist Shuto Okayasu and South Korean artist Jongmin Joy Kim. The gallery has hosted Okayasu for two solo shows and exhibited Joy’s work at VOLTA Basel in 2019. 

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Jongmin Joy Kim (b. 1991) is a self-taught, mixed media painter based in New York City. He was born in a small town in a southern province in South Korea and moved to Manhattan in 2014. He started to draw cartoons to entertain his friends in his early years, developing and changing his styles extensively. The themes that each of Kim’s works contains are not just pleasant ones. It is common in our society now, and it may be a rather heavy story. Excessive interest in others, ethically strict standards, and individual thinking limited by collective intelligence seem to be sickening our minds now. The artist thinks that we can have a little leisurely mind by interpreting the many social issues that we are going through, the emotional judgments caused by excessive immersion. 

 

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Shuto Okayasu (b.1990, Saitama, Japan) is a painter, photographer, and illustrator. He studied Graphic Design at Tokyo Zokei University. Since moving to New York in 2015, Okayasu has worked in both photo-realistic and surrealistic styles, incorporating elements of Japanese painting and cartoons. Heavily influenced by cut and paste and sampling cultures of Hip Hop and Rap, Okayasu paints patchworks of his perception that transports viewers to a dreamlike world. In his work, Shuto intertwines reality and fantasy and explores how perception and imagination play into our daily experiences. His paintings emphasize the bizarre and alluring elements of the mundane. He often incorporates stylistic elements of abstract painting, Japanese painting, and cartoons into his work. This inconsistency lends itself to a feeling of unpredictability, capturing the strange and beautiful miscellany of the cultural world.