After watching a film
I’d recreate the scenes, just
drawing from memory
Complexity
Gi’s work is characterised by complex, interwoven
images and his unusual perspectives.Art therApy
Gi believes doodling
has a therapeutic
quality, and sets aside time
to draw for fun each day.August 2017 39
draw right up to the edge of a page,
even though his mother would tell
him off for doing so. He knew then
that his drawings were different. He
quickly developed a style: that of
images drawn with an artist’s eye
and a draftsman’s hand.
Gi collected artbooks and anything
to do with illustration. He grew up in
Pohang, an industrial city on South
Korea’s east coast, where such books
were hard to come by. So he’d travel
into bigger cities to buy them.
Perhaps because books were a prized
thing, he would study them hard,
memorise them. It’s a skill that would
separate him from his peers. “I also
liked watching movies,” Gi says,
“and after I’d finished watching one,
I recreated the memorable scenes, just
drawing from memory.”
While at junior high school, he
trained at a local art academy. He
studied the basics, including
watercolours, and prepared for South
Korea’s national entrance art exam.
He passed and went to Dong-eui
University where he majored in western
painting, only to drop out and
Inter view Kim Jung Gi