The MCA has commissioned artist Byron Kim to create new works on the 20-foot-high walls behind the admission desk on the second floor of the museum. Kim, who lives and works in Brooklyn, is best known for his monochromatic abstract paintings whose colors are derived from skin tones. His 1993 work Synecdoche (named for the figure of speech in which the part suggests the whole) presented 204 small canvases, each recording the skin pigmentation of a passerby who willingly posed for Kim, essentially “diversifying” the color spectrum of traditional abstract painting. Using the formal elements of such modernist abstract painters as Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko—a rectangular canvas, subtly-modulated paint surface, no clear representational image, and often a single color—Kim’s paintings address ethnic identity and concepts of beauty.

Kim’s project, which is organized by Assistant Curator Staci Boris, is part of the series of MCA wall project commissions that has included works by Uta Barth, Gary Simmons, and Sophie Tottie.