LIM Nosik

LIM Nosik (b. 1989) explores the act of witnessing the invisible—those entities that exist within and beyond the world perceived through the physical body—through the process of painting. Across multiple canvases, recurring images of the artist himself shift between the roles of subject and object, the one who sees and the one being seen. These fragmented self-portraits, dispersed like shards across different frames, function both as reflections—mirror images that extend beyond the boundaries of the body—and as reversed landscapes observed through the lens of painting. Shrouded in a mist that preserves the tension between viewer and viewed, they trace the ambiguity of presence. The gaze, initially centered on the artist’s own canvas, gradually transitions—from the painter, to the subject, and finally to the audience. In his recent series Workroom (2023–), LIM visualizes the spatial and temporal volume between himself and his subjects through a process of layering: oil-painted landscapes are blurred and reworked with oil pastel. By softening visible forms through this visual medium, he evokes the presence of what cannot be seen. For LIM, the studio is both a space of daily repetition and a symbolic, multidimensional site—one where brushes and pigments, unfinished works and unfilled gaps, accumulated memories and emotions all converge. As he envisions the transparent particles that fill the space between his gaze and the worktable, time becomes tactile. Within this process of breathing through moments as they pass, forms lose their clarity, their edges dulled like memories rewritten over time.

LIM Nosik was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1989. He received his BFA in Oriental Painting at Hongik University in 2015, and MFA in Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts at Korea National University of Arts in 2017. He has held solo exhibitions at various institutions such as Space Æfter (Seoul, Korea, 2024), Kumho Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Project Space Sarubia (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Incheon Art Platform (Incheon, Korea, 2020), Artspace Boan 2 (Seoul, Korea, 2020) and Hapjungjigu (Seoul, Korea, 2017), as well as group exhibitions held at ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2024), SongEun (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Ilmin Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Art Center White Block (Seoul, Korea, 2022), SFAC Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (Seoul, Korea, 2021), Amado Art Space (Seoul, Korea, 2020), and more. The artist gained attention for being selected in the Kumho Museum of Art and Kumho Young Artist 2022. He was the artist-in-residence at the SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, Korea) in 2019, Incheon Art Platform (Incheon, Korea) in 2020, and the SFAC Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (Seoul, Korea) in 2021. His works are collected by institutions such as the Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Art Bank, Ilmin Museum of Art, ARARIO MUSEUM and more.