Louis Le Kim
Sample Walks
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Louis Le Kim, Untitled, 2025, Oil on canvas, 57 x 44 in. (112 x 145 cm)
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On view:
March 21st - April 12th 2025
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Opening reception:
Friday March 21st, 6-8pm
86 Walker St #2
New York, NY 10013
Louis Le Kim’s Sample Walks is an exploration of movement, observation, and collection—both literal and metaphorical. Rooted in the concept of dérive, his practice embraces walking as an intentional act of exploration, where spontaneous encounters with space and environment become central to the artistic process. Much like field research, his approach involves an accumulation of impressions—visual, material, and sensory—that are gathered, fragmented, and distilled into his work.
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Le Kim engages with sampling not only in a physical sense but also as a conceptual method. His process involves repetition and iteration, drawing from sound, images, and material textures to create layered compositions where traces of experience take form. Walking, in this context, is not merely a means of movement but a strategy for perceiving and engaging with the world—an open-ended journey in which meaning emerges through interaction with space.
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Distilling fragments, traces, and selections from specific sites and experiences, Le Kim’s work embodies a practice of continuous exploration. His black-painted surfaces and the structures within them evoke a sense of existential contemplation, where absence and presence, reality and imagination intertwine. “These black-painted surfaces and the structures entering it suggest the infinite possibilities we can imagine while trying to continue through the darkness,” Le Kim remarks. “It reflects at the same time the limits of our appreciation but brings us back to the fact that it is simply a painted surface.”
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Through Sample Walks, Le Kim invites viewers into a space of fluid perception, where the act of walking, drifting, and collecting transforms into an artistic language. By embracing chance, repetition, and the layering of experience, his work blurs the boundaries between movement and material, process and form—constructing meaning not as a fixed destination, but as an evolving journey.
Louis Le Kim, Untitled, 2025, Oil on wood, 6.7 x 3.9 in. (16.4 x 10 cm)
Louis Le Kim (b. 1990, Paris) is a French multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses graphite drawings, oil paintings, photography, video work and installations. His practice is deeply influenced by architecture, light, and spatial perception, often depicting abandoned and brutalist-inspired environments with meticulous attention to detail.
Since 2009, Le Kim has engaged in extensive explorations of underground networks, including tunnels, quarries, and industrial sites across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These experiences directly shape his work, which examines space, absence, and the remnants of human presence. His creative trajectory was notably influenced by a year-long residency in a 14,000m² decommissioned power plant in central Paris, where he immersed himself in the city's subterranean landscapes, accessing the space through a manhole cover. This period of total immersion provided him with a unique perspective on urban architecture and the hidden facets of the city.
Le Kim's practice is deeply rooted in exploration. Beyond his Parisian underground ventures, he has traversed various terrains, from the deserts of Kazakhstan's Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site to the ancient ruins of Uruk in Iraq. These journeys have led him to examine the haunting beauty of mostly deserted sites and the scars of history etched into the landscape. His canvases often depict empty, labyrinthine spaces, drawing inspiration from brutalist architecture and industrial environments. The absence of human figures in his work invites viewers to engage with the unseen, traversing landscapes that are both suggested and impossible.
A graduate of Villa Arson in Nice (2013) and Beaux-Arts de Paris (2014), he has exhibited in institutions and galleries such as A2Z Art Gallery (Paris) and was featured in ‘Supernature’ at Palazzo Capris (Turin), curated by ARTUNER or ‘Univers Sans l’Homme’ at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valence (group exhibition curated by Thomas Schlesser, which included works by Giorgio De Chirico and Yves Klein) (2023). His work is part of the prestigious Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, among others.
Le Kim lives and works in Paris.