Looking good Beyonce

Prince once said that one of the greatest joys he’s experienced as an artist is when he receives the respect and admiration of people tht he himself admire. Being an artist in my right, I can say with great certainty that I agree wholeheartedly with him. Throughout the relatively short amount of time I’ve been showcasing my work to the viewing public I’ve gained the respect and admiration of some pretty illustrious folks, some of whom I’ve looked up to growing up.

Take for example one Beyonce Knowles. Surprised? She’s such a big fan of your boy she even wrote a song about me that became quite a big hit. Here’s a clip.

I’m not entirely sure how that song has anything to do with me, but still it’s quite a big honor. I’m a little worried about how Jay-Z feels about Beyonce writing about me. Somehow I don’t think he would approve.

Since I feel obligated to start posting pictures of my artwork since, well this whole countdown is supposed to be promoting my show and all, here’s a pic of a new piece that is titled “Girl Waiting for a Bus.” I’ll probably change the title later. It is painted by my group Jerusalem Crickets.

“Re-Inventing the Wheel” 9/5-9/18 @ The ARTery
Opening Reception: September 5th 6:00-10:00 PM
Closing Reception: September 19th 6:00-10:00 PM

Day 30 (Re-Inventing the Wheel)

(Shaq and Lebron getting ready for my show)

I finally finished my Press Release. It feels pretty good although the third paragraph is a little long.

Press Release for “Re-Inventing the Wheel”

Acclaimed underground artist Terry Kim will hosting his fifth solo show, “Re-Inventing the Wheel” at the ARTery Gallery. Both praised and criticized for his heavy use of pop/mainstream imagery in his hyper stylized portrait and figurative paintings, Terry’s artwork has always blurred the lines between the avante guarde and mainstream. With “Re-Inventing the Wheel,” Terry Kim looks to shatter it with a dynamic new collection of paintings that seamlessly blend fashionable imagery of beautiful women with bold color fields and minimalist composition.

The centerpiece for “Re-Inventing the Wheel” however, will not be the artwork, but a spoken word set that will be performed at the opening reception and filmed for an upcoming documentary. The performance, aptly titled “Re-Inventing the Wheel,” will be a unique blend of stand up comedy, personal stories and a Q/A session that will give a unique insight into the mind of a talented young artist with pretty ridiculous ambitions.

Shaq and Lebron are laughing and discussing how great my show will be. They don’t want to invite Kobe though. )

Terry Kim was born and raised in Orange County. He began exhibiting his work publicly in 2005 and has since appeared in numerous shows in the Orange County and LA area. Growing up he always had a real knack for painting and drawing, and although he never cared much for doing either activity, he did enjoy being better than other people at it so he kept it up just enough to keep improving. He hated doing schoolwork which in part led to his decision to skip university or art school.. He took up painting at the age of 20 initially as a roundabout way to get into filmmaking and because he had nothing better to do. He taught himself how to paint by copying pictures from fashion magazines because it was cheaper than hiring a model and he was reading them anyway. His initial plan was to learn to be a crack realist and then transition to more abstract/non-representational work seeing as he doesn’t really like realistic artwork and loves abstract/non representational art (Joan Miro in particularly.) When he started exhibiting paintings of his early fashion picture copies however, his style really caught on. He hated this at first, but when he started seeing that his work was appealing to very wide number of people from the very artsy to people who couldn‘t really care less about art, he became very intrigued with the potential of the style he created.

“Re-Inventing the Wheel” 9/5-9/18 @ The ARTery
Opening Reception: September 5th 6:00-10:00 PM
Closing Reception: September 18th 6:00-10:00 PM

Day 30 (Re-Inventing the Wheel)

Here’s a new-ish painting. It’s gonna be in the show and is part of my new series called Color Wheel. It’s mostly finished.

“Re-Inventing the Wheel” 9/5-9/18 @ The ARTery
Opening Reception: September 5th 6:00-10:00 PM
Closing Reception: September 18th 6:00-10:00 PM

Day 30 (Re-Inventing the Wheel)

Remember that group Republica? I do. If you don’t, they are dope and you probably do remember them you just don’t remember that you remember them. They did that song “Ready to Go.” Here’s a clip.

I recently stumbled accross a clip of them performing a year ago. I think they reunited.

What I want to know is where the hell was this performed? At a roller rink? There’s like only 20 people there. Republica deserves better than that!

“Re-Inventing the Wheel” 9/5-9/18 @ The ARTery
Opening Reception: September 5th 6:00-10:00 PM
Closing Reception: September 18th 6:00-10:00 PM

Day 30 (Re-Inventing the Wheel)

It’s been a good long time since I’ve posted anything.

The reason?

Well, laziness.

The other reason?

I’ve been prepping myself myself for my next solo show this September. It’s called Re-Inventing the Wheel and it will kick off on September 5th with a fabulous opening reception featuring good food and a spoken word performance by yours truly and end September 18th with a spectacular closing party featuring 4 live musical acts. It’s gonna be a killer. It’s gonna be amazing. However, it will only be an amazing killer if I work my ass off on making it so.

Will that be enough? Will it be enough to kill myself to make a killer show?

NO!

I need you too! If you don’t show up to the show it definately won’t be a killer. It will be just a sad man all alone crying in a corner.

So I need you! But you are not going to just show up to any show gas prices being what they are these days. So it’s my job to hype you up for my show. I need you to be as excited about my show as I am, because I am excited. So I will be doing a post a day for the next 30 days, you know like a countdown, until the jump. It’s gonna be real rugged. I’m gonna get you hype! HYPE

HYPE!

“Re-Inventing the Wheel” 9/5-9/18 @ The ARTery
Opening Reception: September 5th 6:00-10:00 PM
Closing Reception: September 18th 6:00-10:00 PM

The ARTery Gallery @ The LAB
2930 Bristol St, Costa Mesa, Ca
Located Behind Urban Outfitters

I had a whole bunch of fun. This show had far and away the best crowd at any art show I have been involved in. It was more of a club/low level industry crowd which I have since decided is way more fun than the typical art show crowds. They are prettier, friendlier and generally have a much better appreciation for art. Or at least they are more cool about it. That’s not to say that art show crowds don’t appreciate art (because that’s not true at all) but I think at art shows, since everybody is into art or makes art, they always talk like they want to show that off. I don’t know how many times I get some goon step up to me at an art gallery with his arms folded and start grilling me all business-like about my work like it’s a fucking job interview or something. I hate that.

The babe-watch was very solid. Most were cool too. At least they were cool to me because I’m such a bad ass painter, right? Yeah…… anyways, I think in general I did a pretty good job at talking to people which is very hit and miss for me. I don’t think my networking skills were very good by anybody else’s standards, but I definitely think I’m improving in that regard. The audience was pretty soft here though, so I’m not sure if it’s something I should get too proud of myself about.

Of course since I’m Terry Kim, none of friends or anybody I invited showed up. It kind of bugged me, but I don‘t think I‘m going to dwell on it too much. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I’m just not very well liked (and on top of that I straight up suck at inviting people to things) and while that’s pretty unfortunate, I don’t have the time to do anything about it. It would be nice though for somebody to see me when I do well though. My track record for having witnesses at triumphant moments is terrible. I can see why my friends would think I suck.

I think the reception of my work was pretty solid. I got a lot props and a lot of people came to me and said that my work was the best which is always nice to hear. It’s hard for me to say how hard I pwned since I don’t know how well the other artists did. Nobody I invited showed up, so that’s a big negative. On the positive side: I got a lot of people telling me I was the best, I got a lot cards, and people wanted to talk to me all night. Taking into account the fact that I don’t know how the other artists did, on a scale of 1 to 10 I think my pwnage was about a 7.

PWN LEVEL: 7

This was a very early painting I did. I think it was my fourth painting. It was never my intent to be a realistic painter, but I always prescribed to the school of thought that every painter, no matter what style he/she eventually did, should have a solid foundation in realism. On the previous three or so paintings my skill at shading and color selection felt really…….. I don’t know. Erratic? Or inconsistant maybe is a better word. During some moments I felt I could get the shading looking the way I wanted and sometimes the ability would just leave me unexpectedly which was very, very frustrating. I decided to do this painting as sort of homework assignment to get down shading.

I took the image from like GQ or something. I selected it primarily because I thought it would be a challenge. It wasn’t. Whatever problems I was experiencing with shading in the past I guess worked itself out because I basically blew through it with very little trouble. I got pretty bored of painting it after a week or so which is why I never finished it. This began a streak of about four paintings that I left unfinished (I don’t know if it’s by coincidence or not, but these four paintings all have kind of a noir feel going for them.) Of those four this is the only painting that I didn’t destroy. Even though I never really had much of a desire to finish it, since it was so close to being done I felt it would be a shame to destroy it.

During my last show I showed a picture of this piece to a girl I met named Annie and she liked it and said that it looked good unfinished and that I should leave it as is and consider it done. It seemed like a good idea so I decided to fold it into my alphabet series.

Kobe called D-Will a bad boy. He averaged 19.4 points and 10.7 assists. Terry Kim averages 0 points and -0.7 assists. But he has sideburns

New Art Scene Writer For the LA Examiner!

Sorry it’s been awhile since I posted. Normally I would make some comment about how since I get like 1 hit a day, like, who cares, but I just checked my hits for yesterday and today I’ve been getting like hundreds of hits over the weekend. Is that a computer error? Iono. I hope it’s not because that’s pretty cool. Anywho, The reason I haven’t posted in a while is actually not due to laziness this time. I recently got a position at the Examiner as the art scene editor and I have been working really hard at that. I’ve already have three posts up. I have lot of big plans with that position so stay tuned for more announcements on that.

New Shows!

It’s been too long since I’ve done some art shows so I got myself in some shows. Check the upcoming shows sidebr for more details.

(Maria Sharapova Does Not Approve)

I hate life.

Pau Gasol says: “I’m tall.”

I know this is pretty late, but since nobody really reads these, I’m not too worried about it Anywho, this game, as anybody who would be concerned already knows, was what was known as a laugher. There wasn’t much to analyze. Basically The Lakers realized that the Rockets’ center was 6′6″ Chuck Hayes 6′10″ Brian Cook (who, although he’s 6′10,” plays like he’s 4′2″) and that their centers were seven foot Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. And they played accordingly. They played hard, but not all that hard. It was interesting to note that I think this was the first time all year they didn’t blow a big lead.

After the game, the buzz making the rounds was whether or not the Lakers had finally woken up, or if they are still just playing inconsistently and game 5 happened to be on their good day. By and large, most of the pundits have consigned to the fact that the Lakers are just a real up and down arrogant team and that this game wasn’t really a return to form or anything like that. I tend to agree. This team has maybe the worst case of Piston-itis I’ve seen since……… well, the Pistons. And we all know have that turned out.

Am I worried? Yeah. However, this Laker team is far better than any of the Piston-itis teams. Also, even though their collective arrogance played a huge part in their failure, I felt that their biggest deficiency was a lack of a real center after Ben Wallace left. That and they had no respect for their coach. Neither are problems this Laker team possesses.

The Bill Russell MVP of the Game Award: Kobe. Why? Because he’s Kobe. And he has an adam’s apple the size of my fist. Granted I have a small fist, but still.

The Jerry West MVP of the Losing Team Award: Normally I would just automatically give this award to the Fabulous Battier, but he played really, really not fabulous so I can’t in good conscience give it to him. I’ll give it to Aaron Brooks because he looks lik Chris Rock.

The Dominique Wilkins Highlight of the Game: Sasha’s Block Followed by a Breakaway Dunk. That sequence was what I like to call a Pinnochio moment. A Pinnochio moment is when somebody suddenly grows into a real boy (or in Sasha’s case, a real basketball player.) Sadly, it didn’t last very long as Sasha managed to brick everything else. Still though, it quite a change of pace for Sasha to go 1-7 and his one made basket was a dunk