Simon Ko (b. 1988) is an American painter based in Seoul, with a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. He has held solo exhibitions at Nathalie Karg Gallery in New York and at several galleries in Seoul. Drawing loosely on personal history, his paintings convey emotion through recurring symbols – bubbles for memories, flickering candles for fading love – on textured, deliberately imperfect surfaces within clear, graphic compositions.
Simon Ko (b. 1988) is an American painter based in Seoul. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in New York in 2011 and his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2017. In 2012 he was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. His paintings loosely draw on his personal history and deal with human emotion through recurring symbols, such as bubbles standing for memories or flickering candles for fading love. Ko builds textured, deliberately imperfect surfaces with modelling paste and tools he makes himself, while keeping his compositions clearly defined and graphic. His first solo show took place at Eve Gallery in Seoul in 2015. He has since held solo exhibitions at Nathalie Karg Gallery in New York, including “Sparks” (2023) and “Dreams Apart” (2025), and at Seojung Art and Pipe Gallery in Seoul. The acrylic painting “Float A While” (2021), offered by TUMO Gallery, shows his characteristic combination of symbolic imagery and tactile surface.
