The surreal universes that the Korean artist Doy (Do-gyeong Kim) fixes on the canvas are, at first glance, devoid of any topographical and physical logic or location. The landscapes are littered with architectural elements and amorphous formations of unknown aggregate state. Everything seems to turn itself inside out in constant motion.
If one looks more closely, however, one recognises a vertical order: holes and chasms refer to an above and a below. Drawing on spiritual and religious ideas of life after death, Doy paints her own vision of a world that awaits us when we leave the earthly one behind. Unlike religious notions that assign distinct qualities to verticality (good above, evil below), the artist arranges the different levels according to a personal world structure that reflects her own experiences as a stranger in the city (or a fixed point in a foreign land). The ever-changing relationships of inside and outside, of known and foreign, of here and there, of self and other and the in-between are made accessible to us in an imaginative way in Doy’s paintings.