Global Economic | On a Foundation of Ink-Wash Refinement, Opening a New Horizon for Korean Painting with Urban Sensibility

[Future K-Wave Star (3)] Korean Painter Kim Hyun Jung of the 'Naesoong' Series

Boldly shedding painting for painting's sake, she draws works centered on empathy and communication

Drawing on the hard lives of ordinary neighbors, she has risen to stardom through 'Naesoong'

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'Naesoong Hill']

Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung (金烫廷, Kim, Hyun-Jung) was born in Seoul on December 9, 1988. In her late twenties, this provocative female artist has won public intimacy (a facet of pop art) through life-friendly subject matter, narrowing the gap between 'my' everyday life and art, and opening a new horizon for Korean painting. Her 'Naesoong (Feign) Series' has swept across Korea, gaining such recognition that her paintings hang even in unnamed restaurants and worn-down billiard halls at home and abroad.

Kim Hyun Jung went through Sun Hwa Arts Middle and High School and graduated from Seoul National University's Department of Oriental Painting, double-majoring in Business Administration, receiving the Alumni Association President's Award. She earned a master's degree in Oriental Painting from the same graduate school, lectured at Anyang Art High School, and currently gives lectures at universities and companies. Under the theme of 'Naesoong,' she has shown in 7 solo exhibitions and about 40 domestic and international group exhibitions to date, and became a nationwide star artist through her 2014 exhibition 'Naesoong Olympics.'

Her paintings, by wisely sidestepping the trap of art-for-art's-sake with its affectation and pretense, turn every viewer into a non-discriminating comrade. Her paintings form a bond of communication and empathy that anyone can understand. Kim Hyun Jung secures the originality of Korean painting by clearly differentiating herself from Anglo-American pop artists, making the everyday materials around her unmistakably her own.

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'You Who Move Me']

From March 16 to April 11 last year, over 27 days, Kim Hyun Jung drew a record 67,402 visitors to her exhibition 'Naesoong Amusement Park' (Feign Amusement Park), held across all four floors of Gallery IS in Insa-dong, Seoul. At her 2014 exhibition 'Naesoong Olympics' at Gana Insa Art Center, 23,887 people viewed her work over 12 days. This level of audience draw undoubtedly marks her as an artist who creates a box-office sensation.

An artist deeply versed in the styles of Kim Hong-do and Sin Yun-bok, her Korean paintings begin by honoring the tradition of ink-wash painting, which grows more delicate and transparent with each layer applied. Her paintings, where tradition and modernity complement each other, stand as a symbol of a new sensibility within the original form of Korean painting culture. Kim Hyun Jung's work of shedding the heavy burden without regard for others' gaze was itself an act of looking inward and grasping the true substance of 'Naesoong.'

Kim Hyun Jung, the young painter who always appears in hanbok on meaningful days, has a youthful face that seems as if it will never age. The wind blowing over her in late spring is full of the hot intensity of 'Naesoong's' passion atop the refinement of ink-wash coloring. Her paintings spread thick with the fragrance of plum blossoms, transforming her life, and around her, bright, cheerful, and sincere, is filled with love that will carry a happy table of food to her.

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'I'll Come Running']

Within her clear and unaffected paintings lies a variety of discourse presenting the direction of Korean painting, colored with a sharp urban sensibility rooted in tradition. The daily life of the hanbok-clad Seoul girl onto whom she projects herself extends beyond women's lives alone to become the daily life of young people in general, spreading like ink seeping into hanji paper, into a resonance that wins everyone's empathy. Her paintings are a symbol of joy and delight.

Kim Hyun Jung takes as her protagonist a young woman (herself) wearing a jeogori collaged from dyed hanji paper over an ink-drawn hanbok skirt. This young woman, who seems to have shed purity, meekness, and utter chastity, sits sprawled in her hanbok enjoying fast food, or rides a carousel in sunglasses and high heels. In her imagination she rides a bicycle in hanbok or bolts forward like a galloping horse. She shares in the pain of her neighbors' hard present-day lives, encouraging them to soar and endure like colorful balloons.

Kim Hyun Jung strips away the heaviness and approaches her work with enjoyment. Her variations bring in three-dimensional, video, and installation work to overcome the monotony of flat work. She becomes her own subject, photographing herself, drawing the nude figure and then painting the clothes on top. No less than her works themselves, she cuts an imposing figure in major exhibition spaces such as the National Assembly, the Seoul Metropolitan Council building, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'Sampo Generation']

An icon of Korean painting, a maker of exhibitions people go to for fun, a painter who reinterprets Korean painting, an artist who dreams of being a god of exhibitions, a painter of a new genre painting of modern society, a creator of brand value for Korean painting, a future K-wave star in the making, a shaper of discourse on Korean painting, an artist who wants to be like Psy or Kim Jang-hoon of the pop world; her 'Naesoong Amusement Park' was a massive playground for shedding the worries of everyday life.

The 'Naesoong' story, which began with the idea of humorously unpacking people who are outwardly one way and inwardly another, extends from the larger theme of 'Naesoong,' created out of an awareness of others' gaze and the mutual reactions it produces. Following 'Naesoong Story,' 'Naesoong Olympics,' and 'Naesoong Winter Story,' the roughly 80 works of 'Naesoong Amusement Park' depict not an actual amusement park but an everyday-life amusement park, showing how stress is released within this everyday space.

Drawn to the elegance and secretive mystery of hanbok, Kim Hyun Jung captures her own brand value in her work through the honest, everyday scenes of women her age living actively while wearing hanbok. The semi-transparent hanbok, as if something were hidden within its full skirt, carries the message of 'Naesoong': hidden, yet the inside is clearly visible. Art without allure has no value.

Her amusement park, reflecting reality, begins with 'Installment Life.' A girl in hanbok passes through Naesoong Hill, sometimes dreaming of hitting the jackpot in the lottery of marriage, sometimes pondering the tangle of trivial worries hanging over her future, occasionally putting on airs, and clinging to a claw machine in an endless challenge. Wordplay on horses (a homophone play in Korean) becomes the object of linguistic play.

Having loved snacks, pizza, chocolate, and ice cream with a misplaced patriotism, she faces reality on the scale. There are nights when, despite unfavorable circumstances, she wants a drink with grilled pork belly, a display case stirring desires for consumption, and street food that tempts the appetite too. After the satire on the weight of horses and motorcycles ends, satire on Instagram culture, in works such as 'Snow White-gram,' begins. Now she dreams of landing the big one, boldly saying 'Shall we get married?' She has been kept busy with exhibition schedules at the Korean Cultural Center in Berlin, the Newark Museum in the US, and the Mongolia National Museum. When will she land her big catch?

The various everyday amusement parks reflect the artist's outlook on life: that if you cannot achieve everything, you should enjoy life in the present. Doing one's best where one stands, she believes, is what makes something beautiful, and she has come to understand that many things that appear admirable may in fact be 'Naesoong.' May good fortune and meaningful accomplishment accompany the great journey of Kim Hyun Jung, a future K-wave star in the making.

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'Acha (我差) Ramyeon']

[Photo: Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung]

Who Is Korean Painter Kim Hyun Jung?

Education

2015 Master's degree, Department of Oriental Painting, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Seoul National University

2012 Bachelor's degree, Department of Oriental Painting, College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University

Bachelor's degree, College of Business Administration, Seoul National University

2007 Graduated, Oriental Painting major, Fine Arts Department, Sun Hwa Arts High School

2004 Graduated, Fine Arts Department, Sun Hwa Arts Middle School

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'Installment Life']

Major Solo Exhibitions

2016 Naesoong Amusement Park, Gallery IS, Seoul, Korea

2016 Invitational This is our Future, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

2015 Invitational Naesoong Story, National Assembly, Seoul, Korea

2015 Invitational Naesoong Story, Main Hall, Seoul Metropolitan Council Building, Seoul, Korea

2015 Invitational New Painting of a Beauty on Horseback, Special Exhibition Hall, Horse Museum, Gyeonggi, Korea

2014 Naesoong, Winter Story, COEX Hall A, Seoul, Korea

2014 Naesoong Olympics, Gana Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea

2013 Art Seoul Invitational, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea, and others

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'Genitis']

Major Group Exhibitions

2015 Special Exhibition of Korean Painting Collection 'Stop and Look', National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, Korea

2015 New York Korean Youth Foundation Exhibition, New York, USA

2015 Fragrance of May Flowers Exhibition, Gyeongmin Museum of Modern Art, Gyeonggi, Korea

2015 Asian Highway, Seokdang Museum, Dong-A University, Busan, Korea

2014 The 2nd Singapore Bank Art Fair 2014, Singapore

2014 Y&Y Artist Project 'I, My, Me, Mine', Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeonggi, Korea

2014 Open-in-out, Amway Art Museum, Gyeonggi, Korea

2014 Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation 'Show Me the Money' Exhibition, Gana Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea

2014 G-LOVE Exhibition for Fundraising for Heart Surgery for Haitian Children, LIG Art Seoul, Seoul, Korea

2013 Im Zickzack durch die Welt, Museum Neuruppin, Neuruppin, Germany

2013 ZigZag, State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

2013 Bank Art Fair, Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong

2013 Square, Space Womb, New York, USA

2013 The 3rd JW Joongwae Young Art Award, Hongik Art Center, Seoul, Korea

2011 The 12th Korea Women's Art Grand Prize Exhibition, Korea Art Museum, Seoul, Korea, and others

[Photo: Kim Hyun Jung's 'Fighting Spirit']

Awards and Career

2015 8th Woman of Culture of the Year Award, Cheonggang Culture Prize

2015 1st Korea Creative Innovation Grand Prize, Arts Development Category

2014 Dong-A Ilbo's '100 People Who Will Shine Korea in 10 Years'

2014 JTBC 'Beautiful People' Grand Prize

2012 Seoul National University Alumni Association President's Award

2011 12th Korea Women's Art Grand Prize Exhibition, Korean Painting Category, Gold Prize

2011 14th World Peace Art Grand Prize Exhibition, Grand Prize, and others

Jang Seok-yong, Culture Critic, Global Economic (Chairman, Korean Art Critics Association)

Copyright © Global Economic

Written by — Jang Seok-yong