Korea Foundation (KF) | [Interview] Kim Hyun Jung, the Korean Painter Who Communicates Through Cheeky Korean Painting

1. You're regarded as one of the leading trending artists in Korean painting today. What do you think is the secret to your popularity?

I think people call me a "leading trending Korean-painting artist" and "the idol of Korean painting" both because I'm younger than the fixed image of a painter (middle-aged), and because, like a singer, I've formed a kind of fandom culture as a Korean painter (200,000 followers on social media). I also think it's because people value that I focus on communication and keep creating work that resonates. One of my mottos is "to communicate with the public through art," and communicating with the public really is something I consider more important than anything else.

2. I'd like to hear about the 'Naesoong series' and the exhibition <A Dozen Eggs, the Age to Marry>, which both drew a lot of attention.

Naesoong Story began with the intention of caricaturing people's two-facedness. I've always been sensitive to other people's gazes and judgments, and I found it easy to resent people who smiled in front of me but wore a different expression behind my back, so I tried to paint the way their outside and inside didn't match. But in the process, I realized I was ultimately no different from them, and as a result, I ended up expressing not other people but myself -- constantly changing moment to moment -- through a variety of works.

<A Dozen Eggs, the Age to Marry> depicts the lives of women living in this era. Since women inevitably have a lot to think about on many fronts -- the career interruptions caused by marriage and childrearing, and questions of femininity -- I tried to embody those concerns in my work. There are still many more stories I want to express going forward, so my dilemma now is how to narrow them down.

3. Your work is notable for its striking ideas and abundant wit. Would you say you have a humorous personality?

Whether I'm actually funny or not is something I'll leave to the people around me to judge, but I do like wit. I like dad jokes too (laughs). When someone tells me something funny, I tend to write it down so I can tell it to other people, and if someone teases me, I like to play along. I think if you keep pursuing laughter and fun like this, you might naturally become a humorous person. I also think of myself as fairly honest. In my working process, before I paint a figure in hanbok, I render the person nude first and then "dress" them. One reason I dress them this way is to express 'honesty.' Whatever I do, I try to express my thoughts as honestly as possible, and I often build a humorous device into the subject matter or the title. One example is the work <Oops>. The title, "아차(我差, Oops)," combines the character '아(我),' meaning "I," with '차(差),' meaning "lacking," metaphorically describing a figure who has a gap or flaw, while also doubling as the exclamation "Oops!" that such a figure might let out in that very situation. The figure in the piece is eating ramyeon, unaware that coffee is spilling from her tumbler and soaking her bag, and I imagined that the moment she realizes that fatal mistake, an "Oops!" would naturally slip out. It's meant to suggest one's own shortcomings while expressing, in a somewhat witty way, that very "oops" moment. There's also <Marriage: Worlds Apart>, from the marriage series, which parodies Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. It's a piece painted to compare life before and after marriage. I titled it "Worlds Apart" to convey the idea that before and after marriage are, in fact, worlds apart. I may not go so far as to call myself humorous, but I do think it's accurate to say that (my personality) leans toward pursuing laughter and fun, and revealing honesty.

4. If there's a message you'd like to give viewers through your work, what would it be?

I'd like to talk about 'naesoong,' the overarching theme running through my work. I've come to think of naesoong as a kind of lie -- a lie that differs from one's true feelings, told because you want to look good to someone or because you're conscious of others' gazes. Hegel described people's efforts to be recognized as a "struggle for recognition." I think naesoong is a near-universal, instinctive phenomenon, occurring in almost everyone regardless of age or gender, as part of that very struggle for recognition. That's why I don't find naesoong entirely unlikable. My works are self-portraits capturing my own image. By showing, with satire and humor, the not-so-elegant daily life of a young woman in elegant hanbok, I wanted to say, "I'm like this too -- are you, perhaps, the same?" Further, by throwing out an empathetic message -- "Shouldn't we love this side of ourselves? We can't help but be this way" -- I wanted to unravel society's tensions in a lighthearted way. If, amid life's harshness, people could look at my paintings and think, "Ha, that's hilarious, how cheeky," even just for that moment, nothing would make me happier.

5. I understand you've also made headlines not just through exhibitions but through collaborations. All of your work must be meaningful and memorable, but is there a project that stands out as especially memorable to you?

The project that stands out most in my memory is the one I did for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. I worked with Coca-Cola, the main sponsor. I painted my 'Naesoong girl' dressed in hanbok, playing winter sports. After working through the basic contract terms and coordinating opinions, the events I ended up depicting were curling, short track, and bobsled. I created the work around the idea of the Naesoong girl enjoying sports together with Coca-Cola to mark the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, a festival for all of humanity -- and, just like any other project, the Coca-Cola collaboration was prepared diligently, through endless conversations and countless drafts exchanged back and forth. As a result, we were able to produce a good piece. Through collaboration, an artist can use an already well-known, popular brand or product as a platform to reach the public, incorporating their own art into people's daily lives. If more companies plan diverse promotions with more artists and roll out broader marketing strategies, I expect a world where art breathes together with the public will arrive that much sooner. I believe the activities I'm engaged in are contributing to that positive momentum, and I'm grateful for every corporate collaboration proposal I receive.

6. Could you also say a word about your future plans or hopes?

The power of hallyu (the Korean Wave) these days is truly remarkable. K-pop, K-drama, K-movies, and other elements of Korean culture are being introduced to the world and enjoyed by so many people globally. But the reality is that art has a thinner base of public enjoyment compared to music, and Oriental painting and Korean painting in particular receive little attention. So my plan going forward is to keep devoting myself to my work while being even more actively engaged in helping Korean painting become widely known around the world. Concretely, I'd like to promote the fact that a great many artists in Korea today are dedicated to painting 'Korean painting' infused with our country's distinctive sensibility. If I have one wish, it's that Korea's art market keeps growing and develops into a structure where many more people can enjoy art. To that end, I plan to keep working hard myself -- not only through my own art practice but through active lectures and social media engagement. I hope you'll give me plenty of support so I can become a better artist than I was in 2021, and so I can do my part in spreading Korean painting even further.