ARTIST STATEMENT

Born in 1990, Singapore, Howie Kim is a part of an emerging generation that has known nothing but the now universal paradigm of the Internet.
 

Graduating with a BA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Art, Singapore (2018), Kim's digital illustrations, animated videos, .gifs and paintings revolves around his identification with his own generation, the Millennials. He is interested in the common stereotypes of Millennials, and both celebrates and problematises their obsessions with social media, popular culture, the Internet, memes, viral videos, slangs and so on.

Fascinated with all things kitsch, bizarre and surreal, Kim creates unnaturally distorted figures, juxtaposing them in surrealistic and mysterious realms that disrupt the line between reality and fantasy. In correspondence to this, he has recently adopted Augmented Reality as his new form of medium, creating face mask filters and distributing them on social media.

Howie Kim’s whimsical style of works has allowed him to work with commercial establishments such as Universal Music Group Singapore, producing singles and album artworks, as well as animated music videos for local musician Gentlebones. Kim’s works are also published in several magazines. He was commissioned by IWC Schaffhausen Southeast Asia to create a series of illustrations and video for ICON Singapore, in commemoration of IWC’s 150thAnniversary.