Sojin Im (b.1987) completed her B.F.A in Visual design and M.F.A in Art Education at Dankook University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Hongik University’s program for Design and Craft.
Im’s recent works are focused on canvas paintings, but her full-time artistic practice has put forth works across multiple media, cross-pollinating and mutual-scaffolding into an expanded practice, including digital image production, motion graphics, storybooks, and installations.
The artist’s recent paintings feature a rabbit-bear hybrid stumped between choices. The furry hybrid animal is a figment of the artist’s imagination, an easily recognizable and approachable figure. The rabbit-bear questions its own identity and is burdened by its own ambivalence toward perceived and presented choices. This problem of overthinking and lack of action is also called paralysis by analysis and Hamlet’s Syndrome.
Not everything can be explained to a five-year-old; even less can be abstracted down to a singular answer. Ambiguity and granularity is inherent in our lives. Singular values and systems are often wrong and rarely useful even if not. In a culture deeply averse to uncertainty, the notion of normalcy, obsessed with a singular “right answer” has backed itself into an awkward cul-de-sac. Im So Jin’s works explore how those hard-fastened preconceptions might be loosened, unfastened, and resolved.
The rabbit-bear is presented across numerous variants and copies to vehicle that exploration. Over iterations, as details are added and the rabbit-bear paintings become increasingly complex, even the boundary between original and copy is blurred. Which are standard and which are not?
The rabbit-bear’s eyes say it all: The O and X in the eyes makes one wonder, 'is any elucidation truly fixed and immutable in life?’ Contemporary experiences lived-in by herself, by broader society, or those shared with her often appear in her painted works. The acrylic paints serve a free-form medium for this purpose, maximizing expression through colorful mixtures that leave distinct traces of free-flowing lines.
Through her practice, she offers a smidgen of solace and affirmation to her fellow contemporaries buckling under the stress of trying to hit an absolute average value when we should be looking for our own answers for living.
