SOFT MONUMENTS
Sharon Chohi Kim + Nick McPhail, 2025
This exhibition gathers three works in conversation around memory, impermanence, and the unseen structures that hold personal and collective experience. One piece reconstructs a childhood bedroom through the architecture of light and shadow. Another reimagines the sundial as a register of time shaped by feeling—nonlinear, unstable, and fluid. The third, a spectral form made of ginkgo leaves, whispers through rustling paper, invoking the ghosts of women. Together, these works create a landscape of held memory and ephemeral imprint.
Sharon Chohi Kim + Nick McPhail, 2025
This exhibition gathers three works in conversation around memory, impermanence, and the unseen structures that hold personal and collective experience. One piece reconstructs a childhood bedroom through the architecture of light and shadow. Another reimagines the sundial as a register of time shaped by feeling—nonlinear, unstable, and fluid. The third, a spectral form made of ginkgo leaves, whispers through rustling paper, invoking the ghosts of women. Together, these works create a landscape of held memory and ephemeral imprint.
Photo Courtesy of Dan Schwalm
Video Courtesy of Sharon Chohi Kim
About the Artists:
Sharon Chohi Kim is a performing artist and composer working at the intersection of immersive experimental opera, performance art, improvisation, sound art, and site-specific activation through movement and voice. She recently premiered new work at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and in Diasporic Refractions, a program by LA Phil Insight in collaboration with GYOPO. Chohi has performed with a wide range of institutions and ensembles, including the Getty Center, LA Philharmonic, Hammer Museum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Industry, Long Beach Opera, Wild Up, Human Resources LA, Getty Villa, the Broad, REDCAT, LA Master Chorale, Berggruen Institute, Hollywood Bowl, LA Opera, Epoch Gallery, Four Larks, and HEX—staging works in tunnels, gardens, and in water. Her work as a performer and composer has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, KCET, KCRW, New Classic LA, SF Classical Voice, and the Los Angeles Times.
www.sharonchohikim.com
Nick McPhail (b. 1982) is Los Angeles-based painter and sculptor using renaissance techniques to consider the peripheral mundanity of urban life. Born and raised in Laingsburg, Michigan, Nick attended Michigan State University where he studied painting and ceramics, graduating with a BFA in 2006. Since then, he has maintained a consistent practice that has evolved to rely on personal observation and photography as the basis for his intuitive compositions. Recent solo exhibitions include: Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA (2023); Massey Klein in New York (2023); Amélie Maison d’Art in Paris (2022); Ochi Projects in Los Angeles (2020); Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019); and Holiday in Los Angeles (2018). He has completed residencies at Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019); Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho (2019); and 100 West Corsicana in Corsicana, Texas (2018). He is a 2023 Hopper Prize Finalist and in 2017 he was awarded a grant to attend a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. His work is in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and beyond.
www.nickmcphail.com
Sharon Chohi Kim is a performing artist and composer working at the intersection of immersive experimental opera, performance art, improvisation, sound art, and site-specific activation through movement and voice. She recently premiered new work at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and in Diasporic Refractions, a program by LA Phil Insight in collaboration with GYOPO. Chohi has performed with a wide range of institutions and ensembles, including the Getty Center, LA Philharmonic, Hammer Museum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Industry, Long Beach Opera, Wild Up, Human Resources LA, Getty Villa, the Broad, REDCAT, LA Master Chorale, Berggruen Institute, Hollywood Bowl, LA Opera, Epoch Gallery, Four Larks, and HEX—staging works in tunnels, gardens, and in water. Her work as a performer and composer has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, KCET, KCRW, New Classic LA, SF Classical Voice, and the Los Angeles Times.
www.sharonchohikim.com
Nick McPhail (b. 1982) is Los Angeles-based painter and sculptor using renaissance techniques to consider the peripheral mundanity of urban life. Born and raised in Laingsburg, Michigan, Nick attended Michigan State University where he studied painting and ceramics, graduating with a BFA in 2006. Since then, he has maintained a consistent practice that has evolved to rely on personal observation and photography as the basis for his intuitive compositions. Recent solo exhibitions include: Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA (2023); Massey Klein in New York (2023); Amélie Maison d’Art in Paris (2022); Ochi Projects in Los Angeles (2020); Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019); and Holiday in Los Angeles (2018). He has completed residencies at Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019); Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho (2019); and 100 West Corsicana in Corsicana, Texas (2018). He is a 2023 Hopper Prize Finalist and in 2017 he was awarded a grant to attend a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. His work is in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and beyond.
www.nickmcphail.com