KIM WAN
Kim Wan is a British artist of East Asian and English heritage. Wan was a pioneer of hip hop inspired graffiti during the 1980s, and the speed and power of spray-painting and graphic art has remained a strong thread throughout his art career. In his most recent work, Wan has utilized the immediacy of graffiti art on small scale oil on canvas paintings to offer the power of reductionist brush strokes and a limited, vibrant palette.
Whatever the subject and medium employed, Wan is a consummate painter, belying his classical training. This painterly quality is evident in his ongoing series of self-portraits, the heavy impastoed, painted surfaces on found objects included in major installations, or his digital work.
In the UK, Wan has worked with museums and institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery, TATE Modern, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the National Gallery. He's a selected artist by the international committee at the Florence Biennale and is represented in the Saatchi Collection. Wan has exhibited in the US and Europe ranging from Berlin, Moscow and Beijing to the Louvre, Paris.
