Boy in the Water

December 17, 2008 10:45 PM

Boy in the Water― The website of artist Miran Kim. Her art is characterized by an eerie, gruesome quality, which she achieves without the use of computer effects.

Miran Kim was born in New Jersey and lived with her family in South Korea from age eight to eighteen. She studied at the Academy Art College of San Francisco and the School of Visual Arts in New York. There she created a series of paintings titled Fear of the Unknown, which captured exactly the elements that she is famous for in her covers for the 'X-Files' comics. Miran was officially approved by the X-Files creator Chris Carter who stated "I love Miran Kim's X-Files cover art!" Miran Kim also did the artwork for graphic novel The Fallen (1999), written by David Aaron Clark.

posted by netbros (12 comments total)

I love her style. The Fallen was absolutely stunning.
posted by dejah420 at 11:54 PM on December 17, 2008

The paintings are really not my cup of tea, but the X-Files artwork is fun, and sort of giddily over-enthusiastic.

Is there a name for that genre of cartoony, faux-naive, sometimes neo-primitive stuff, invariably replete with huge-eyed children and fantastic animals? (Privately, I know it as 'the cack-handed art they link to on Boing Boing', though Kim at least seems a couple of notches above that.)
posted by jack_mo at 6:06 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

jack_mo: "Crap."
posted by rusty at 8:55 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

Needs more computer effects. And cowbell.
posted by happyroach at 10:05 AM on December 18, 2008

I loved the paintings on the main site. Beautiful, haunting work.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:55 AM on December 18, 2008

Very beautiful indeed
posted by smorris at 12:30 PM on December 18, 2008

which she achieves without the use of computer effects

Yeah, all artists up till about 20-30 years ago could claim that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:06 PM on December 18, 2008

"Is there a name for that genre of cartoony, faux-naive, sometimes neo-primitive stuff, invariably replete with huge-eyed children and fantastic animals?"

Heh. I'd thought of it as "Juxtapoz crap" but that's not really accurate (in part because Juxtapoz has far more crap than just that, though that's pretty much its stock-in-trade).

It's basically a mashing of Weimar expressionism (Dix) and manga/super-d. OH LOOK CHILDHOOD IS CREEPEEZ. It's trite and I wish it would die, though from going to too many openings around here, my prediction is that the next phase (which this fits into) will be this shit plus nautical themes. Sea turtles and anchors are big.

But it's been going on for a while now—think about how many '90s goth things had the mutilated baby dolls as part of the motif. (OH GOD, THE '90s GOTH-LITE BULLSHIT IS BACK!).

Plus, her covers look like Dave McKean knock-offs.

(Sorry that I'm being so negative, I usually like your posts a lot, netbros, I'm just particularly sick of this style right now, and this doesn't even seem to be that great an example of it.)
posted by klangklangston at 2:24 PM on December 18, 2008

Her stuff is pretty macabre. Can't imagine hanging it on my wall.
posted by gawkycreature at 10:07 PM on December 18, 2008

a mashing of Weimar expressionism (Dix) and manga/super-d

Dix had never occurred to me as an influence on this stuff, but now that you point it out it's forehead-slappingly obvious. Funny how that can happen.

from going to too many openings around here

It's a strictly American, mostly West Coast thing, right? I just can't imagine a serious gallery in the UK or Europe putting on a show of this kind of stuff (though I almost wish one would, just so I could see the reaction on opening night).
posted by jack_mo at 10:17 AM on December 19, 2008

"It's a strictly American, mostly West Coast thing, right? I just can't imagine a serious gallery in the UK or Europe putting on a show of this kind of stuff (though I almost wish one would, just so I could see the reaction on opening night)."

Yeah, it's all over LA. While I blame Juxtapoz for it, since they've promoted a lot of similar artists, they're actually a better mag than I'm giving them credit for. They just like a lot of bullshit, especially Robert Williams, who's work is fussy cod-surrealism.

Part of the problem is that, like I mentioned, I live just a couple blocks away from the gallery ghetto in Culver City (which does shit like tries to bill itself as SoHo West), and for every good to great show, there are like four of this stuff. I'm heartened by what I see as a return to the idea of technical skill as important (since for too long, we saw a bunch of lazy Brut bullshit), but I want there to be interesting ideas behind it, not just another reworking of fairy tales or whatever.
posted by klangklangston at 12:14 PM on December 19, 2008

The more I look at these, the more I like them. Thanks, netbros.
posted by homunculus at 7:24 PM on December 19, 2008