The Painter of Purgatory: SIM_Moby's Megabyte Erosion Cycles

Not heaven, not hell — the in-between. SIM_Moby builds his own cosmology on the canvas, cycling between digital and physical worlds.

SIM_Moby, 9408 SIM_Visibility, Mixed media with acrylic stick collage, 45.5x53cm

"Giving birth to one life is the same as giving birth to one death."

A childhood realization, SIM_Moby says. From that single sentence, the artist built his own cosmology. Not heaven, not hell, but the space in between. The place before life and death are decided. Its name: SIM_Purgatory.

Purgatory, a World Without Extinction

For SIM_Moby, purgatory is not a metaphysical metaphor. It is a concrete world — "an afterlife linked to reality." He pulls concepts and images from the present, fuses them with monstrous forms and visions of past lives, and builds 2D landscapes. First, he sketches with physical materials. Then, he completes the work digitally. Because in the digital, there is no extinction.

The completed image returns to physicality. An illusion is handed to the viewer, blurring the line between painted canvas and printed digital work. Physical → digital → print → collage → physical again. The artist calls this process "the reincarnation of painting."

Megabyte Erosion Cycles

9407 SIM_Visibility — truths that can only appear opaque, and yet are seen

The phrase SIM_Moby uses most often to describe his technique is "megabyte erosion cycles." Textures made by repeatedly eroding and corroding pixels in the digital realm. A technique that layers unusual density onto pixels. Through this process, the screen takes on the noise texture of 1990s VHS tape. The artist pushes the aesthetic of the JPG — what a 2D digital medium can reach — to its limit.

Then, the high-density 2D images are printed onto various physical surfaces and dismantled again. The cut fragments are reassembled chaotically, shaped like Catholicism's "flames of purgatory" — the purifying fire that burns away sin before entry into heaven. The surface, finished with acrylic stick, presents a unique texture made by the collision of high-density collage, adhesive, and acrylic stick.

Birth (sketch) → death (digitization) → rebirth (print) → death (collage) → rebirth. In purgatory, life and death circulate.

From Toyota, Nagoya, Seoul

SIM_Moby's range is wide. Starting February 2021 at Gallery Blanka in Nagoya, then March at RAFU Gallery Keyaki in Toyota, May at Bincan in Seoul, September again in Nagoya. In August 2022, he held the first solo exhibition by a digital artist at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art gallery. In 2023, he crossed Nagoya (Gallery Sou, Mitsukoshi Department Store Arte Casa), Santiago (Chile Tapiial Virtual Gallery), and Seoul (MISAJANG, NOWHERE).

In 2023, he was selected for the 50 Artists To Watch exhibition at a Florence contemporary gallery in Italy. In 2024, he exhibited at the Kameyama Triennale in Japan. In 2022, he served as ambassador for the Daejong Film Awards and the Chunsa International Film Festival.

The Opaque Truth

All six works submitted to SAF 2026 belong to the SIM_Visibility / SIM_Memory series. The artist recently wrote beside his work:

"About truths that can only appear opaque, and yet are seen."

The afterlife, including purgatory, is a future world for the living. The coming future must be opaque, and even the moment it arrives in the present, humans can only grasp fragments. This is why SIM_Moby blurs texture through "digital erosion." Perfect clarity cannot reach truth. Blur is closer to fact.

Solidarity in Purgatory

SIM_Moby has submitted six works to SAF.

Three of them have already sold.

84.9% of Korean artists are excluded from institutional finance. Sales of works by SAF-exhibiting artists build a mutual-aid fund that returns as low-interest loans to fellow artists facing financial discrimination.

Purgatory is a utopia without extinction. When SIM_Moby's work circulates through the mutual-aid fund in the time of the living, that circulation is no different from his cosmology. An unending cycle of reincarnation. But at the end of this particular cycle, someone escapes the shadow of debt.

Between Heaven and Hell

Catholicism teaches that the flames of purgatory burn away sin before entry into heaven.

On SIM_Moby's canvas, flames also mingle. But these flames burn nothing. They reveal what survives. Images that do not disappear through pixel erosion. Forms that are reborn after death.

SAF 2026 is close to such a flame.