BYRON KIM: COSMETIC PORTRAITS

Each fall GYOPO collaborates with a diasporic Korean artist and releases a limited edition artwork for the purpose of fundraising to ensure all of our programs remain free to the public. In 2018, Gala Porras-Kim created a limited edition print The Writing of Stones and in 2019, Anicka Yi produced a limited edition sculpture and perfume, Shigenobu Twilight. For 2020, acclaimed New York-based painter Byron Kim has created Cosmetic Portraits: Angela Dimayuga, Aruna D’Souza, Danny Park, Lulu Grier-Kim, Mihail Lari, Young Joon Kwak, Shizu Saldamando, Toba Khedoori, Peter Som, 2020, a very special 2-tiered limited edition and original works to benefit GYOPO. Using makeup foundation as his medium, Kim has created an edition of 40 prints and 3 hand-painted works reminiscent of his Synecdoche series, which was first exhibited at the celebrated 1993 Whitney Biennial. Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part stands for a larger whole. This ongoing work is an open-ended archive of portraits of his community and other groups and individuals with whom he engages. In conjunction with Kim, GYOPO selected nine AAPI participants in the US, whose unique skin tones are represented in a grid.

Printed by El Nopal Press, Cosmetic Portraits invites us to consider what skin color signifies, the impossibility of a single portrait to capture the complexity of an individual, and a range of them to cover a race. The subjects of these portraits include Angela Dimayuga, Aruna D’Souza, Danny Park, Lulu Grier-Kim, Mihail Lari, Young Joon Kwak, Shizu Saldamando, Toba Khedoori, and Peter Som. Each individual is a unique and integral member of the AAPI community, engaged in cultural production, community engagement and leadership. We are pleased to bring together an intergenerational, multi-gendered and mixed-race group of remarkable artists, writers, chefs, students, activists, designers, entrepreneurs, and collectors, who represent the immense range of diasporic Asian identities in this abstracted portrait during the Coronavirus pandemic and thismoment of racial reckoning and physical distance.

GYOPO wishes to thank CLE Cosmetics for their collaboration.

Cosmetic Portraits: Angela Dimayuga, Aruna D’Souza, Danny Park, Lulu Grier-Kim, Mihail Lari, Young Joon Kwak, Shizu Saldamando, Toba Khedoori, Peter Som, 2020
CLE Cosmetics CCC Cream on paper
12 x 10 in.
Edition of 40
$1500

Cosmetic Portraits: Angela Dimayuga, Aruna D’Souza, Danny Park, Lulu Grier-Kim, Mihail Lari, Young Joon Kwak, Shizu Saldamando, Toba Khedoori, Peter Som, 2020
CLE Cosmetics CCC Cream on paper
16 x 12 in.
Edition of 3
$5000