OMAE Gallery is pleased to present the work of Sun-kab Kim, who creates contemplative paintings using mother-of-pearl and traditional lacquer on paulownia wood. His surfaces—minimal yet richly layered—suggest a convergence of color, material, and meditative form. Stripped of expressive brushstrokes or representational imagery, these works are not depictions but presences: weighty, luminous fields formed by the artist’s repetitive gestures of sprinkling, layering, and polishing. The embedded fragments of mother-of-pearl glimmer like constellations, inviting the viewer’s imagination to trace invisible connections across the pictorial plane—an act akin to stargazing, where meaning is not delivered but discovered.

Kim’s process draws deeply from traditional East Asian aesthetics, particularly the literati ideals of restraint, naturalism, and inward reflection. Working with paulownia wood—a material historically cherished by Confucian scholars for its quiet beauty and atmospheric sensitivity—he burns, sands, and lacquers the surface before applying powdered nacre in a series of tactile, layered interventions. The result is a field of controlled depth, where surface and substance are inseparable. These works do not offer a single reading, but rather open a space for contemplation, echoing the disciplined elegance and spiritual quietude of the scholar-painter tradition. In Kim’s hands, lacquer and mother-of-pearl become not merely materials, but vessels for time, memory, and the unseen.