Joeun Kim Aatchim’s Layered Lines Summon Translucent Worlds

In Joeun Kim Aatchim’s paintings—but she calls them drawings—everything is so vivid, yet so elusive. Her line feels definitive, yet the images they convey seem to fade away into sheer luminosity. Her works are typically painted using mineral pigment in shellac—sometimes with watercolor, pastel, or other materials—on layers of silk that, stretched across frames, show through to the wall behind. They’re all about one image being seen through another—n