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Street artist, petty thief, porn illustrator, born-again Christian, corporate shill: these are a few of the complex sides of artist David Choe as portrayed in the new documentary, DIRTY HANDS. Director Harry Kim first began filming Choe's exploits eight years ago, turning footage of freeway and bus-stop graffiti bombings into the short film, WHALES AND ORGIES. DIRTY HANDS follows Choe's remarkable fortunes since then—from ghost-writing lesbian fiction to displaying his art in ice cream parlors to selling out multi-million-dollar gallery shows. DIRTY HANDS benefits from a staggering amount of video that seemingly details every major (and minor) moment of his life. Besides chronicling Choe's ever-changing coifs, this obsessive documentation shapes a mesmerizing warts and all sketch of the artist's endless contradictions, failures and triumphs, ranging from his darkest moments in a Japanese jail, to his lucrative cache in hipsterati circles, to his troubled relationship with a long-term girlfriend. The tortured artist may be a cliché but for Choe, a diagnosed bipolar and self-described man boy, DIRTY HANDS suggests an intriguing but uncomfortable co-dependence between artistic energy and psychological turmoil.

Balancing that dark portrait are the many glimpses of Choe's scintillating creative output, including his now-infamous whale tags, densely intricate room murals, and penchant for hyper-explicit pornographic illustrations. He's painted with aerosol, blood, urine and soy sauce, but whatever the medium DIRTY HANDS captures Choe as one of contemporary art's most darkly enigmatic figures.

In Person: Harry Kim