Kim Hyun Jung x AK Plaza

A Naesoong girl with her cart piled high with holiday gifts hung on the outer wall of a department store.

Ahead of Chuseok in 2019, I worked with AK Plaza on the collaboration ‘The Textbook Chuseok Gift.’ I painted three new pieces, reworking the originals 〈Coy: Oops〉, 〈Coy: Heritage of the Mind〉 and 〈Coy: Sweet Whispers〉 into holiday scenes. I actually went to an AK Plaza store, composed the shots with AK shopping bags and fruit baskets from the basement food hall, took photographs, and then finished the works through sketching and coloring. From August 30 to September 14, 2019, these paintings hung as the Chuseok imagery on the facades, food halls and event corners of every branch, including Bundang, Suwon, Wonju and Pyeongtaek, and customers who spent 100,000 won or more on an AK Card received a limited-edition travel suitcase cover printed with the Naesoong girl, which sold out on the very first weekend.

The holiday-gift dilemma comes around every year and never gets any easier; in these paintings, the Naesoong girl in her hanbok went through it on our behalf.