Casey Kaplan
Nature’s Patterns
Cindy Ji Hye Kim’s paintings transform motifs inspired by agrarian calendars during the Middle Ages to ameliorate pervasive anxieties.
By Bryan Martin | August 29, 2025
Fall is fast approaching, and to mark the change of seasons with a degree of insight that seems to be lacking, Cindy Ji Hye Kim has taken inspiration from medieval agrarian calendars. For her new exhibition, which opens next week at Casey Kaplan, Kim renders feudal imagery of harvest between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice in her signature grey-scale and transforms it within idiosyncratic compositions that amplify its metaphorical possibilities. Symbols of inevitable transition and loss—scythes mowing wheat and culling animals for the winter—are infused with the artist’s resounding equanimity. “It’s really the time to let things go,” she says, “then reach zero and start again.”
The New York-based artist’s initial infatuation with unidentifiable figures from the Middle Ages began while viewing an exhibition on Medieval calendars at the Morgan Library in 2018, which sparked a conceptual affinity for the subjects’ corporeal ties to the land. She believes the anonymity of such farm labor alleviates the self-absorption that plagues contemporary culture, where smartphone notifications feel more pressing than learning where our food comes from. Kim’s past work also implements such idiosyncratic seasonal references, such as paintings focused on the renewal of spring and summer.
Carrying over this interest of time and place, Kim shifts her focus to the contemplative periods of fall and winter. She is preoccupied with her toiling muses’ lack of interiority. “It’s my own desire to get out of myself because contemporary art is so much about that,” she says. “At some point, it’s just solipsistic.” For viewers, recognizing these visually obscured figures in each painting is just the beginning; the crux of the pleasure comes from Kim’s free rendering of them in highly varied compositions.