Louis Le Kim’s paintings are deeply influenced by his explorations of abandoned and active industrial sites—steel mills, electric and nuclear power plants, mines, oil fields—as well as subterranean urban networks, frontlines, archaeological sites, and hostile natural environments such as deserts and volcanic regions. Le Kim transposes these architectural fragments, gathered over the course of his explorations, into monumental and fictional environments set within deserted landscapes. Louis Le Kim’s works provoke a strange kind of vertigo—an attraction to the sublime tinged with unease—reflecting both our thirst for spectacle and our growing fear of collapse.
Louis Le Kim’s was exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valence in 2023. He received the Drawing Prize at DDessin Paris in 2020. In 2021, he was artist-in-residence at Villa Saint-Louis Ndar with the Institut Français in Senegal. His work is part of the prestigious Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo collection.
