Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to welcome Ken Gun Min to our growing program of artists. Min joins the gallery following his May 2022 solo exhibition, Silverlake Dog Park. A solo exhibition of new paintings will be presented in our main gallery space in the fall of 2023.
Min’s paintings explore intimacy, masculinity, and representation across different cultures. Employing a mixture of European oil paints, Korean pigments, embroidery, and beading on canvas, the artist incorporates styles from various regions across history to consciously practice outside the Western gaze. Often featuring nude and queer-coded men, his portraits and lush landscapes concoct fanciful idylls where longing, melancholy, and euphoria manifest irrespective of societal expectations. In both his technical application and the scenes he composes, Min blends memory and fantasy to challenge conceptions of sexuality, gender, and race, especially as it is depicted in Western art history.
Ken Gun Min (b. 1976, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) studied western painting, art history, and theory at Hongik University in Seoul, Korea and received his MFA from the Academy of Art, University of San Francisco. Solo exhibitions include Silverlake Dog Park, Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; Wounded Man, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, K contemporary, Denver, CO; and Becoming Palm Tree, Gae Po Project Space, Seoul, Korea. Group exhibitions that featured Min’s work include Torrance Art Museum, CA; M+B gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Harper’s, East Hampton, NY. He was a Hopper Prize finalist and received awards from Direktorenhaus, Berlin, DE and the Kellogg Foundation, New York, NY. Min’s work has been featured in Artnet, ArtMaze Magazine, Artsy Editorial, and Hyperallergic.
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