Artist Spotlight: Rickey Kim

Rickey Kim is a native of Los Angeles and the first from his Korean family to be born in America. As a student at University of California, San Diego, Rickey founded Evil Monito [EM] - www.evilmonito.com - an online magazine rooted in the goal of “Deconstructing Pop Culture” through theoretical means. Evil Monito, in its eight year existence, has become recognized as a worldwide phenomenon, with readership numbering in the hundred of thousands. Since 2003, Rickey has written for Flaunt, LA Times, Sportswear International, Theme and Nylon. Through Evil Monito, he has worked with a variety of lifestyle brands such as: Creative Recreation, Medicom Toy Corp, K-Swiss, House of Cassette, and Kangol, among others. This later resulted in various lifestyle co-branded products, which included (but was not limited to): footwear, headwear, denim, bicycles, vinyl toys and clothing. In 2004, Rickey became the Brand Manager of Hudson Jeans and helped found The Social Trust – a photography/film studio headquartered in Downtown LA. In 2005, Rickey decided to take upon another media experiment - namely the ironic task of branding himself and developed www.mrkimsays.com. In 2005 he was accepted, but declined to attend Wieden + Kennedy’s exclusive advertising program, WK12. In 2006, Rickey became the Creative Director of RIOTTT (www.riottt.com), a social networking site based around artisans. In mid 2007, Evil Monito officially established a brick-and-mortar building in Echo Park. This modular space was purposely designed to fulfill its clients’ needs, by hosting a variety of events ranging from film screenings, retail pop-up experiments, to live music performances. May 2008 marked the re-entry of Evil Monito into the online realm creating a site that is focused on original content ranging from editorial to rich media video content. Also in the summer of 2008, Rickey took on editorial duties for 944 Magazine as the Los Angeles Managing Editor; and has since injected a directional aesthetic and editorial change to the magazine. Currently Rickey is heading digital strategy for New York based marketing firm, Epiphany.