In Joeun Kim Aatchim's paintings, the world is both sharply defined and ethereally elusive. Her line work seems definitive yet fades into luminous ambiguity.

Using mineral pigment in shellac on translucent silk, her layers of drawings reveal more than one truth at once—showing different facets of a single image rather than distinct objects.

Aatchim describes her method as akin to layering first drafts. Unlike revising an artwork until it's perfect, she keeps the initial impulse even as ideas evolve. This process results in a bouquet of essays, each finding its own tentative resolution.

Since earning her MFA at Columbia University, Aatchim has exhibited widely, with solo shows across New York, Los Angeles, Guadalajara, Seoul and Madrid. Her first exhibition in São Paulo will follow later this year. Currently based in Brooklyn but often working from home, she finds rest impossible without art.

Her work is both a reflection of her vivid memory and the struggle to capture it. Memories, like her artworks, are always thoughts in progress, never fully fixed or complete.