D La Her is a Paris-based South Korean artist working on detailed figurative painting. Her early years and nomad lifestyle have influenced her artistic approach revolving around the fluidity of identity and memory. La Her’s realistic yet dreamlike paintings are openly inspired by post-impressionism, American realism, cinema, as well as relational aesthetics and the concept of void in East-Asian philosophy. 

 

Her paintings with bodiless and faceless figures explore the complex quest for the self in a cultural and social environment requiring adaptability and flexibility. Empty bodies and faces contrast with surroundings full of detailed objects. The human figures are defined only by those objects, clothes and sometimes masks. The choice of external elements is based on what society and culture condition us to consider as standard and valuable.

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Subjects fade away and are detached from their surroundings to find themselves. La Her captures this distancing and blurs the boundaries between the inner and outer self. If a mirror reflects the outer self, yet only a bottomless mirror reflects the inner self. She further questions social relevance by delving into the encounter between fullness and void, the individual and the collective and daytime and nighttime. 

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The bright artificial lights in her paintings blend with the silent night air and shape colors of festive solitude. Her meticulous brushstroke on a large canvas gives the spectator a different reading of her work depending on the viewing distance. As viewers get closer to observe details, blank faces invite them into the emptiness. Those faces are addressed to everyone, regardless of origin, color, or gender. It is an empty field for reflection, of encounter with others and oneself... to finally fully grasp one's presence.