Kim sun-jeong reinterprets the tradition of portraiture rooted in the Eastern concept of jeonsinsajo (傳神寫照)—the expression of inner spirit—through a contemporary sensibility, capturing a quiet warmth within her works.

When standing before Kim sun-jeong’s paintings, what remains most vividly is not the form itself, but rather the lingering warmth of a human presence.
It feels as though emotions that cannot fully be expressed in words slowly seep into the delicate texture of silk, leaving behind traces of feeling.

Her works speak of human presence and the image of life itself.

The artist has consistently painted people.
As a child, she would draw paper dolls and create characters, playing imaginative role-playing games while telling stories to herself.
What seemed like a game that would end with childhood unexpectedly continued into adulthood.
The only change was the medium—from paper to silk, from colored pencils to traditional Eastern painting materials.
Yet the essence remained the same: telling human stories.

Kim sun-jeong’s portraiture originates from the tradition of classical portrait painting.

At its core lies jeonsinsajo (傳神寫照)—a philosophy that goes beyond depicting a person’s outward appearance.
Rather than simply identifying status through facial likeness, this approach seeks to reveal the inner world of the subject: their character, intellect, spirit, accomplishments, and the traces of a life lived.

While traditional portraiture often separated form and meaning, Kim sun-jeong brings them together, allowing each to support the other and move toward the same direction of expression.

Thus, although her works employ traditional methods of depiction, what emerges from them is a subtle sense of temperature—at times warm, at times cool.

The artist’s series “She” and “Myth” are not grand declarations but rather quiet conversations.

For Kim sun-jeong, “myth” does not refer to heroic tales of extraordinary figures.
Instead, it speaks of the narratives each of us carries in our own lives—the emotions that cannot be fully spoken, yet remain as gestures of the body.

On the surface of silk, images are layered, lifted, cut, and reassembled.
Through these processes, the differing “temperatures” of human presence gently spread across the work.

Rather than attempting to replicate someone’s likeness in the traditional sense of portraiture, Kim sun-jung expresses figures through her own sensibility of warmth and presence.
Even as facial features fade away, the works reveal something deeper: breath instead of a face, traces of scent and presence, the folds of worn garments, silent words, and the emotions carried within hands and feet.

Through these quiet yet powerful gestures, Kim sun-jung gradually completes her own language of portraiture—
“Warmth: Glow”