Kim Hyun Jung x Bausch + Lomb

A Naesoong girl who had gazed longingly up at the poster model in an optician’s window finally put in her lenses and stood moved before the mirror.

From April 2017, over about seven months, I carried out an art collaboration with ‘Lacelle,’ the contact-lens brand of the global eye-health company Bausch + Lomb. I painted four new works: 〈Coy: Bausch+Lomb × Narcissism〉, about looking straight at yourself instead of through the eyes of others; 〈Coy: Bausch+Lomb Crystal Poster × Can’t I Have?〉, in which she gazes up at a shop-window poster; 〈Coy: Bausch+Lomb × Heritage of the Mind〉, in which she agonizes over which lenses to wear; and 〈Coy: Bausch+Lomb × Moving〉, in which she is moved by how different she looks with her lenses in. From there the collaboration branched out in many directions: an online event giving Naesoong KakaoTalk emoticons to users of the Bausch + Lomb app, a commercial shoot, an interview with Daehak Naeil, serving as a judge for the ‘Eye Gaze Queen’ contest, and the production of Naesoong stickers.

Not the wish to look prettier than others, but the gaze of someone trying to see her true self: that was the confidence I wanted to paint onto the lenses.