Art Exhibition

Wansun Kim

Icon on Demand

Dates: March 13 to 31, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, March 13, from 6-8 PM


Canonized in the 1980s as the "Korean Madonna," Wansun Kim emerged as a seminal figure in the transformation of South Korean popular culture, distinguished by a vigorously choreographed stage presence, sensual performances, and a meticulously constructed public image that recalibrated prevailing norms of femininity and celebrity. Yet the pre-programmed system that magnified her celebrity concurrently instituted regimes of psychological pressure and artistic restriction.

In her solo exhibition Icon on Demand at New York City's Tenri Cultural Institute, Kim advances the inquiry into a broader critique of contemporary regimes of visibility and control. Kim's debut as a painter in New York occurs on the threshold of her fortieth anniversary underscoring the profundity of the gesture: Wansun Kim re-enters the public sphere not to reproduce the consumable persona that once secured her fame, but to assert the autonomy of an artist who transforms the wounds of visibility into the very substance of aesthetic contemplation.

This exhibition comprises six of Kim's large-formatted and several medium size paintings with the subject of self-portraiture evocative of the coercive temporality that once governed her life as a K-pop star. At her opening ceremony Kim will do an art performance.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Please contact the curator, Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos, at tvrachopoulos@gmail.com or 1-646-344-9009 or Artist's representative: Asian Art Works Asiainfo@asianartworks.net

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