Weltansicht:셰계관

KYOUNGHO ISAAC KIM

October 30 - dECEMBER 12, 2026

On view at Red Giant, Weltansicht: 세계관 presents recent paintings by Baltimore-based artist Kyoungho Isaac Kim. The title pairs the German Weltansicht with its Korean equivalent, 세계관 (segyegwan). Both describe a worldview, a person's quiet, often intuitive way of looking at life and reality, shaped by language and culture.

Kim approaches cultural images through layers. In his paintings, the hyperreal Korean territories of the internet overlap with Western cultural imagery, and neither settles cleanly on top of the other. Kim is interested in how these images, often gimmicky and instantly familiar, serve as testimony to the post-imperial aesthetic that runs through his surroundings.

The work draws on painters who used the medium to process the sociopolitical subjects of their time, most notably Philip Guston, whose shift to figuration has long been central for Kim, and Gerhard Richter. Kim also looks to the Korean painters Park Seobo, Lee Ufan, and Kim Whanki, whose meditative mark making builds meaning through iteration.

The exhibition holds a pointed critique of figuration in view. In his 1981 essay “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression,” Benjamin H. D. Buchloh argued that the return to traditional representation was a cultural and political regression, one that could serve the same movement toward authority that fascist politics exploits. Kim paints with that warning close at hand. Rather than resolving the tension between representation and authority, the works leave it open.

At a moment when questions of national identity and cultural belonging feel newly urgent, Weltansicht: 세계관 considers how a worldview is assembled from borrowed and inherited images, and whether painting can examine those images without restoring the order they represent.

Artist Bio

Kyoungho Isaac Kim is a Baltimore-based artist whose painting practice explores identity, migration, and belonging across national and cultural borders. Born in Minnesota and shaped by his Korean heritage, Kim works through figurative painting, assemblage, and material experimentation, incorporating Hanji (traditional Korean paper), oil paint, and acrylic to create layered narratives where memory, mythology, and lived experience intersect. His practice draws from personal experience, historical research, post-imperial discourse, and the history of painting. He received his MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2025 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2026. He is also a co-founder of Flying House Arts Collective, through which he supports exhibitions, workshops, and collaborative opportunities for emerging artists. His work continues to consider painting as a space for negotiating cultural histories, relationships, and the complexities of belonging.