Kim Ryu’s work feature mysterious beings transposed in a surreal world. In many of her compositions, anthropomorphic figures are in the process of discovery or survival in a foreign landscape. The figures rarely show emotion or are simply implied with a silhouette which contrasts the bizarre, fantastical, and unpredictable world surrounding them. Inspired by Indian miniatures, Kim’s compositions break the rules of perspective and focus on a dream-like and expressive quality

Her process is open to accident in the initial stages, and then she carefully chooses the objects and figures in the piece. Most of the objects in her work serve as markers of the modern versus ancient, real versus unreal. Her subject matter revolves around individual stories of an evocative and melancholic world dripping with symbolism.