Lim Heejae, Snake In The Garden

Lim Heejae
Snake In The Garden, 2025

Work Area: Poster, Printed Matters, Art Book.

Client: Lim Heejae

Poster︎︎︎

594 × 841mm

Following the title of her solo exhibition, Snake in the Garden, one might step into the gallery and search for a snake within the unfolding scene in Diorama of a Bird of Paradise (2025). A bird with an elongated tail, wings angled downward in descent, small birds nesting between bent branches—while it may seem to infer the possibility of a snake, none ever appears. This absence is both a strategy and a metaphor. Instead of reproducing or recording reality, Lim reflects on painting’s position within the contemporary condition of images, imagining transitions from one frame to another—almost like a screen. The viewer’s gaze reaches the surface of the canvas before it reaches the forms portrayed upon it, and her paintings dismantle and reassemble the instant in which the eye perceives such forms and assigns meaning. The moment a viewer realizes the absence of any such snake, the trust they placed in the title begins to fracture; one is released from the expectation of faithful representation. The relationship between Tree of Stuffed Hummingbirds (2024), painted from photographic references, and the new work A Charm of Stuffed Hummingbirds (2025), which draws on but unbinds itself from depiction by emphasizing motion and inter-image mobility, reinforces the logic of the world she has been constructing. What matters is the state of being charged with movement, the premise that an image might slip into another frame at any moment. It is here that we recognize her long-standing approach: the decision to reach painting by way of taxidermy, the way in which she maneuvered her brush to achieve this manner of articulation.

(...)

Returning once more to painting: translating specimens from a European natural-history cabinet into painting, adopting the format of medieval triptychs, using phrases unfamiliar within Korean linguistic tradition as titles—these are among Lim’s favored strategies of summoning practices she has no personal experience with. Such gestures strip away historical context and the comforts of inherited conventions, leaving only the outer skin. Clearing away the weight accumulated under the name of painting, erasing the ease offered by tradition, and replacing everything with the fluid image that slips between screens, this act, this exhibition, may ultimately be read as a confession of how Lim Heejae relates to painting itself.

Text extracted from ‘The Snakeless Snake Painting, Slipping Images’ by Jihyun Shin (Curator)

Lettering︎︎︎

S, L, ej, k, G, Th, r, d

I sought to metaphorically visualize the theme and title of the exhibition. To achieve this, I collected photographs of snakes from numerous angles and forms, extracting the segments that evoked the strokes of letters. After selecting a typeface crafted in an atypical form, I deconstructed the letters into multiple fragments. Using the extracted snake segments and the deconstructed letter fragments as individual units, I recombined them to design the title lettering. Furthermore, rather than relying solely on the unexpected effects obtained during the digitalization process of the photographs, I meticulously refined the shapes and textures. Meanwhile, the frame surrounding the text was designed in a similar manner. I likewise collected various types of tree branches and, while preserving the inherent form of the images as much as possible, combined them along a thoroughly planned guideline.

Regarding her exhibition, the artist states, "The exhibition interprets the dynamic force generated within the fixed canvas of a painting as the hidden danger of a snake in a garden—that is, a latent volatility." As if to reflect her words, the "snake" is nowhere to be found in the actual artwork. Instead, passing through the "snake" as a metaphorical symbol for the new possibilities of painting, it is actively infused into the poster design, particularly the title. The title design sits somewhere between legible text and imagery. It is crafted by combining an atypical, hand-drawn base typeface with traces that imply—but do not directly point to—a "snake." Meanwhile, the frame surrounding the text is composed of interconnected tree branches. At certain points, the frame and the letters connect with one another, blurring the boundary between the text and the supplementary formative elements (the branch frame) from a macroscopic perspective. Furthermore, a bird icon, converted into a digital format, overlaps between the letters and the frame, serving a similar function within the same context.

In my daily practice, rather than utilizing typefaces or creating title letterings in a conventional, textbook manner, I am interested in design methodologies that blur the boundaries between text and image (iconography). I want to more actively break away from what is generally expected of a poster, such as information delivery through the medium and the legibility of text for that purpose.