The Hybridityof Kim Wan
TOBY BULA-EDGE AND VERA BELL
Electro Studios hosted Kim Wan’s new exhibition Hybridity on 8-9 August, with an open view the evening before.
Shown to a soundtrack of avant-jazz/hip-hop, Wan’s art was perfectly at home in the slightly rustic space that is Electro Studios. He aims specifically to blur the line between fine art and graffiti, something which stems from his having become obsessed, in the 80s, with spray painting – “I just fell in love with big letters on walls,” he writes. Later he went on to study at the Winchester School of Fine Art.
The art on display was a mixture of his portraits and his graphic pieces. The portraits (some of which may be seen on his own website) are intentionally distorted. Painted quickly and heavily re-worked later, they move between the traditional and the technological. The process, and that movement, are clearly an integral part of the finished work. He cites Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon as influences, with a bit of DC and Marvel comics.
Apart from the feeling of the paint hitting the canvas, there’s an even greater sense of movement in the graphic pieces, where the combination of graffiti and fine art is most apparent. Swirling and violent lines sit atop a spray-painted background. The more violent images (one particularly resembled blood splatter) call very strongly to mind Wan’s other passion, which is boxing.
Wan is locally based, having fallen “into the underbelly of Hastings, with its artists, musicians and bohemian lifestyle” and completed his art foundation course at Hastings College 30 years ago. Judging by the details on his website, his subsequent career has lifted him from the underbelly into the art establishment. Nevertheless, the work maintains a surprising rawness and an immediacy that render it absolutely authentic, with a hybridity that stems not only from technique and intent but now, like that of his art heroes, the familiar tension between the eccentric and the establishment.
More details of Kim Wan and his work can be seen at kimwanart.com, particularly his extensive CV of exhibitions, films, and performance pieces.
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