A Almeida & Dale presents Miss Ceilingfan — ad nauseam, the artist's first exhibition in Brazil Joeun Kim AatchimBorn in Seoul, South Korea, and based in Brooklyn, USA, the artist brings together 21 works, including 15 previously unseen silk paintings, as well as sculptures and objects. Produced during an extended stay at her parents' home in Seoul, the paintings in the Miss Ceilingfan series stem from everyday observations, memories, and emotional states experienced by the artist away from her studio in New York.
The character that gives the exhibition its name has been a part of Aatchim's work since 2022. With lapis lazuli blue hair and golden eyes, Miss Ceilingfan reappears throughout the show in successive variations. Her face always seems close to being revealed, but never completely defined. With each new painting, the character's expression changes slightly, as if the artist were pursuing an image that insists on escaping.
“Over time, the repetition became like a prayer. Until now, Miss Ceilingfan wasn't a specific face or a fixed figure, but rather an idea of a woman, or, more precisely, an infinity of women. […] She is someone I have never met, but somehow I already know her. I don't remember her, but somehow I recognize her face. She is me and you, and some woman we know,” says the artist.
Rather than leading to a definitive image, repetition produces subtle differences. Familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, Miss Ceilingfan ceases to operate as a specific character and takes on more open contours, bringing together memories, experiences, and projections that accumulate throughout the series.
“Initially prevented from producing new images, Aatchim began to obsessively repeat the same face until repetition itself became the theme and method of the exhibition. The subtitle ad nauseam alludes both to this visual structure and to a psychological and bodily state. Connected by suspended chains and small crucifixes, the paintings cease to operate as individual portraits to constitute a single affective structure, traversed by ideas of devotion, resistance, and survival,” writes Lucas Goulart in the exhibition text.
In his practice, Aatchim dedicates himself to recording sensations, thoughts, and emotional states that often escape the accelerated rhythms of contemporary life. Fantasies, everyday observations, and intimate experiences become material for works that do not seek to represent specific events, but to preserve something of what is about to disappear.
His works do not present themselves as immediate records or representations of a current event. On the contrary, they preserve the silence of a mature and reflective inner gaze, as well as the speed necessary to capture fleeting states. Emerging already conjugated in the past, these images become fixed as memories on the verge of oblivion.
Service
Exhibition | Miss Ceilingfan — ad nauseam
From July 04th to August 01th
Monday to Friday: 10am to 19pm, Saturday: 11am to 16pm
