featured artists
neither here nor there
Meet a curious creature of imagination and form with artist, Minhoe Kim
In Minhoe Kim’s imagined universe, a curious figure slips quietly through the cracks of definition. Known simply as “Frog,” this sleek green form emerges again and again across her work, never quite the same, yet always unmistakably itself. At once plausible and elusive, Frog inhabits Minhoe’s canvases without explanation like a series of low-key cameos.
The origin of Frog traces back to a specific, sensory moment in which the sound and smell of waterproof paint used at a construction site lingered just beyond an iron gate. This industrial scent merged with the image of rain-soaked wild grass, together forming a kind of habitat, both imagined and real, where Frog could hide. From this space of mingled impressions, Frog began to take shape: a glistening, green form with soft limbs and a surface that clings, reflecting the sticky quality of the waterproof paint that first inspired it.
For Minhoe, imagining Frog is a process that unfolds like a word-chain game. One thought leads to another, connections form, and suddenly Frog is no longer just a character, but a vessel for play, contradiction, and open-ended meanderings. She draws from photographs to gather fragments of objects and recontextualize them in ways that are intentionally ambiguous. What results is a practice rooted in curiosity and transformation that embraces unfinished forms and expands into broader, more imaginative terrains.
The green paint she uses is designed to mimic the natural world, providing a kind of protective shell for Frog, while the wild grass from her memory transforms into a resonant space, one where the echoes of repetitive waves continue to flow. As she builds her visual landscapes, Minhoe constructs a living world around Frog, defining its habits, retracing its steps, and fleshing out the environments it roams.
Minhoe’s works defy the logic of daily life. Though they appear to be shaped around the familiarity of Frog, they slowly drift into more abstract terrain. What is it we are really seeing? Is Frog sleek and firm, or sticky and soft? Do those limbs truly exist, or are they merely a figment of our imagination? In this way, Minhow challenges the assumptions we carry and the categories we rely on. Her work suggests that fixed perceptions are simply surfaces waiting to be re-written.
Ultimately, Frog invites us to question what we think we know. It lives in the in-between, where identity, meaning, and appearance are always shifting. It is here, in this gloriously uncertain space, that Frog resides, never settled, yet forever possible.
