Minyoung Kim — Whispers Inside Things

Minyoung Kim — Whispers Inside Things; Untitled Art Fair Miami this December

Minyoung Kim’s solo show Whispers Inside Things uses cats as a recurring, off-kilter presence — and she brings new work to Untitled Art Fair Miami this December. If you like paintings that reward slow looking, these small, surreal intrusions are worth following: they turn familiar domestic scenes into quiet puzzles.

Kim, South Korea–born and London-based, has built a signature around partial sightings — a black paw hooking over a table rim, yellow eyes caught behind a curtain, a shadow bleeding through a gauzy veil. Some works are more literal, like a crouched black cat watching cherries in Cherries with Cat (2025); others suggest a creature through reflection or touch, as in Condensed Gaze (2026) and Big Fish (2026).

Colour drives much of the effect. Kim says she often visualises the palette before the composition is fixed, then lets the painting evolve rapidly from thumbnails on an iPad or in a notebook. That looseness keeps the images from feeling overworked; the result is a calm surface that hints at something slightly wrong beneath. As she puts it, "I’m interested in that point where the familiar starts to shift into something a little stranger," she says.

Her small catalogue of tied-together oddities includes a teapot with a human-like face, a jar that reads as an expression, and a lobster with cat eyes. In Burning Leaf, a cloche reflects the room while a leaf smoulders inside, and a paw lifts the lid; in Behind the Veil, a cat’s shadow through translucent fabric makes the scene feel as if an event has just happened or is about to happen.

Kim completed her MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2021 and has worked in London as a full-time artist since. The move to London pushed her toward experimentation and a practice she describes as deeply personal; the paintings read like visual notes that invite interpretation rather than dictating meaning.

For collectors and gallery-goers who favour quiet, conceptually sharp painting, Kim’s work is a reminder that narrative can be teased out of absence. Look for her Enari Gallery presentation at Untitled Art Fair Miami this December — her first solo showing at an American art fair — where she’s building a new body of paintings from the studio.