ARTIST SPOTLIGHT:
Guimi You at Frieze LA 2023
by Ross Karlan, Director of Art Muse LA in Miami, 7 February 2023.
Guimi You. Dear Mr. Magritte, 2023. Oil on linen 60 x 48 in. (152 x 122 cm).
Image Courtesy the artist, Make Room, Los Angeles.
Art Muse LA is looking forward to returning to Frieze LA for the 2023 fair. As we look ahead at the fair’s rich diversity of offerings from galleries around the globe, we are paying particular attention to California-based painter Guimi You (b. 1985, Seoul, Korea). You’s work will be on view at Make Room’s booth, a Los Angeles gallery directed and founded by Emilia Yin in 2018. Yin’s vision is to highlight cutting-edge emerging artists, especially women, and artists of color.
Guimi You is no exception, especially regarding her own identity and dynamic approach to painting that blends her training in multiple painting traditions. She studied traditional Korean landscape painting at Seoul National University in South Korea. She later received an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in London. Her soft lines and vibrant palette create worlds she acknowledges as “dream-like” and transcendent, blurring the lines between light and dark, real and surreal.
René Magritte (Belgian, b. 1898–d. 1967). The Banquet, 1958. Oil on canvas, 38 1/4 x 51 1/4 in. (97.3 x 130.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago: direct link.
Many of You’s works depict domestic scenes and landscapes, but a new painting she will be exhibiting at Frieze drives home her dream-like style in an even more direct way. Dear Mr. Magritte, completed in 2023, commemorates You’s visit to the former home of Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte in Brussels (on Rue Esseghem 135). Magritte is known for his ability to have viewers question their perception of reality. You’s work pays homage to many aspects of Magritte’s corpus of work, whether in the play between day and night in the split moon/sun, the nighttime landscape in the bottom of the frame, or the motif of the easel which appears in several of Magritte’s works. Nevertheless, You remains true to her style. Vibrant teal and umber push just beyond the realities of a European street. Additionally, You includes an anonymous female figure — a common motif in her work — here wistfully walking into the world both she and Magritte have created in harmony.
If you plan on attending Frieze LA 2023 (February 16-19), be sure to check out You’s work. Additionally, you can find her work at Make Room Los Angeles in Hollywood (5119 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038) or on her website: www.guimiyou.com.