Paint skins (2011-Ongoing)
New York, NY
Shades for You and Me, Acrylic on wall, 2017
Paint skins emerged from a personal compulsion: a skin-picking condition known as excoriation disorder. I continually peel the skin at the inner corner of my thumb, a habit I believe began after I was uprooted from Busan to Chicago at fifteen. In time, I discovered that peeling paint produced a similar sense of release, offering both satisfaction and a way to move anxiety through the body.
That experience led me to experiment with paint as material. By pouring, casting, and peeling acrylic, I create paint skins that shift painting away from its conventional supports. Without canvas, brushstroke, or image, painting begins to exist as material first. It becomes something between painting and sculpture, suspended between two and three dimensions.
As a Korean-born immigrant and non-native English speaker, I experience this pushing of painting’s boundaries as parallel to my own life. The acts of peeling, removing, and reshaping material echo processes of translation, dislocation, and self-negotiation.
