Byron Kim is a painter based in Brooklyn who received a BA from Yale University in 1983 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1986. He is a Senior Critic at Yale University. He has received numerous awards including the Alpert Award, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. He has participated in many international exhibitions including the 7th and 3rd Gwangju Biennale in Korea in 2000 and 2008. In addition to the National Gallery of Art’s collection, his work is in the permanent collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX, the Hirshhorn Museum, the M+ Museum in Hong Kong; the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Byron and I met up at his current show titled Mud Root Ochre Leaf Star at James Cohen Gallery on the Lower East Side and spoke about so many things from his early days as a student to art’s relationship to the universe. He’s one of my favorite people and it was a real pleasure to have this conversation with him at the site of his powerful show.