Hun Kyu Kim’s work give Korean custom a mind-bending modern spin

The nearer you have a look at Hun Kyu Kim’s work, the extra disquieting they turn out to be.

However the satan is, nearly actually, within the particulars.

Beleaguered catfish, sword-wielding canines and armored rodents commit acts of violence, malice and mischief, their expressions contorted, their eyes bloodshot and yellow, their faces typically partly decomposed. Without delay amusing and grotesque, the works put a contemporary spin on the historic portray types that Kim spent nearly a decade mastering.

One in all Kim’s new work, “Too Cool for Purchasing,” depicts a chaotic mall. Credit score: Hun Kyu Kim/Excessive Artwork

The 36-year-old is often primarily based in East London, the place he spends as much as 10 hours a day, seven days every week, engaged on his intricate artwork. However earlier than leaving his house nation to review on the UK’s Royal Faculty of Artwork seven years in the past, he underwent a conventional and extremely technical schooling in Seoul Nationwide College’s Oriental Portray program. The course required him to painstakingly reproduce Asian masterpieces and brushwork strategies from centuries previous.

“My grasp was very strict — he did not need me to experiment,” Kim recalled. “They actually wished me to observe their orders, as a result of it is nearly a perception (system) or a strict construction that they need the subsequent era to inherit.”

Throughout his research, Kim discovered himself significantly drawn to silk work from the Goryeo dynasty, a time when Buddhism flourished on the Korean peninsula. Just like the Buddhist scrolls he was impressed by, his personal detailed works are painted in skinny, delicate strains utilizing wealthy natural pigments. He too makes use of silk as his canvas, tracing photos from paper sketches earlier than bringing them to life with a tiny paintbrush.

Within the course of, Kim takes the historic artwork type into current day, naming inspirations that vary from Dutch Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch to Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. (“I used to be a part of the era that was influenced by anime,” Kim mentioned, referring to South Korea’s determination to raise a long-standing ban on Japanese animation within the late Nineties.)

Centering his work round a fundamental theme, be it a location or kind of animal, he imagines — after which paints — small tales that exist independently whereas additionally relating to 1 one other. However as an alternative of depicting spiritual narratives like his historical forebears, his microcosmic worlds are steeped in satire.

“Drowning,” certainly one of nearly a dozen of Kim’s work displayed on the latest Frieze Seoul artwork truthful. Credit score: Hun Kyu Kim/Excessive Artwork

In “Becoming Room N.7,” animal police stalk a altering room occupied by hairless rabbits, certainly one of which seems to have been skinned, its pelt hanging from a close-by hook. “Too Cool for Purchasing” depicts a lawless mall full with escalator sword fights and a swarm of bugs fought off with heavy artillery. “Empty Work of the Damaged Hearted,” in the meantime, takes the type of a labyrinthine artwork truthful (not in contrast to the one during which the portray hung), with partition partitions and film frames serving as portals to totally different — however equally chaotic — worlds.

Evolving views

These new work (the most costly of which offered for round $60,000) are maybe Kim’s most complicated to this point. Just like the inconceivable Penrose stairs — the paradoxical phantasm of an ever-climbing staircase — his artwork more and more performs with viewers’ sense of perspective. Current on a number of planes without delay, Kim’s worlds fold into each other to unsettling impact. Three of the work he created for Frieze Seoul function the phrase “uncomfortable” of their titles.

But, having beforehand provided commentaries on present affairs, the painter says his new works are free from the politics in items from his early profession.

“I used to suppose that artwork and politics have been the identical factor, and that by exhibiting my work I may discuss political points,” he mentioned. “These days, I strive to not discuss a lot. As a substitute, I unfold photos in my work very randomly, and destroy (any sense) of the place the beginning is and the place the top is.

“I do not suppose I am providing some sort of lesson via my work,” he added. “Quite, I need to present photos which can be in opposition to logical thought.”

“Uncomfortable Artist Residency” performs with viewers’ sense of perspective. Credit score: Hun Kyu Kim/Excessive Artwork

His strategies have modified, too. What was as soon as a meticulously deliberate portray course of is more and more improvised, with the painter typically starting in the course of an image and dealing outward.

The outcomes, nonetheless, are not any much less intricate. And Kim’s work might now be extra amenable to audiences in South Korea, the place speaking about political points remains to be “thought-about a sort of taboo,” he mentioned.

Talking on the eve of his Frieze Seoul presentation — his first time exhibiting a physique of labor in his house nation — the painter expressed uncertainty about how his artwork could be obtained by his compatriots.

“There is a slight distinction between the UK viewers and the South Korean viewers, however I believe they are going to meet on the identical level ultimately.”