Dong-A Ilbo | Bursting Into Laughter at the 21st-Century Genre Painting, the “Hanbok Naesung Woman”
Dong-A Ilbo covered how Kim Hyun Jung's hanbok collage work 'Oops' became a hot topic and stirred controversy on social media (Facebook), and ran an interview with the artist. She explained that the title, combining '我' (self) and '差' (fall short), was meant to humorously portray the dual nature of contemporary people who appear flawless on the outside yet feel lacking within, and the article also noted that three of her works sold out within two days at a joint exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center.
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[Photo] Artist Kim Hyun Jung poses covering her mouth with her hand in a coquettish gesture at the venue of "Kim Hyun Jung's Naesung Story," held at the Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seocho-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 10th. Works depicting the artist herself as the model are on display. Three of her exhibited pieces proved so popular they sold out within two days. [Byline illegible] Reporter, but@donga.com
Bursting Into Laughter at the 21st-Century Genre Painting, the "Hanbok Naesung Woman"
25-year-old rookie Oriental painter Kim Hyun Jung
Humorously depicts contemporary people whose outside and inside differ
Netizens go wild; gallery show "sells out" in just two days
In the 'Oriental painting,' a young woman dressed neatly in a red hanbok sits on the floor eating instant noodles straight from the pot. As she works her chopsticks, her gaze is fixed on a Louis Vuitton handbag and a Starbucks coffee off to the side of the room. This work, which ironically juxtaposes "cheap instant noodles" with "expensive luxury goods," has become a sensation, earning some 42,000 recommendations on a humor page on the social networking service Facebook.
The work has been read as a satire of a subset of vanity-driven Korean women (colloquially dubbed "doenjang-nyeo," or "soybean-paste girls"). Netizens resonated with how it humorously captures the distorted desires of some women who scrimp on food, even eating instant noodles, just to afford luxury goods and premium coffee.
As men's sympathetic reactions piled up, some women pushed back, calling it "offensive." One woman, surnamed Eom, objected, saying, "Don't lump all Korean women together as 'doenjang-nyeo' and curse at them based on the behavior of a few." The humor page that introduced the painting drew some 800 comments debating the issue between men and women.
The artist behind the controversial piece 'Oops (我差)' is Kim Hyun Jung (25), who graduated at the top of her class from Seoul National University's Department of Oriental Painting last year. Meeting a Dong-A Ilbo reporter at the Seoul Arts Center in Seocho-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 10th, Kim said, "By titling it with '我 (self)' and '差 (fall short),' I wanted to express a facet of contemporary people who appear flawless on the outside but are lacking within," adding, "Through a painting of a woman wearing the most elegant of garments, the hanbok, while behaving in the least elegant way, I wanted to humorously express the duality of human nature."
The hanbok-clad woman in the work is the artist herself. She laughed as she explained, "As a university student, I wanted to depict, through painting, the hypocrisy of people who praise you to your face but curse you behind your back. But then I realized I had that same tendency in me, and that's how I came to paint myself as the model."
Kim has mainly painted humorous works showing a woman in a neat hanbok eating McDonald's fries with two straws in place of chopsticks, or a woman laden with shopping bags flustered as her shoe slips off, and so on. She first draws the woman in the nude, then applies hanji (traditional mulberry paper) and other materials in a collage technique to render the hanbok, so that the woman's bare skin shows through. She explained that she wants to convey the message that even in a person whose outside and inside differ, what's inside is, in the end, visible to all.
From the 6th to the 13th, Kim opened a solo corner titled "Kim Hyun Jung's Naesung Series" within Part 1 of "The Day Manager Kim Goes to the Gallery," a joint exhibition by 68 artists at the Seoul Arts Center, and set a record by selling out all three of her exhibited works within two days. The pieces sold for between 400,000 and 2.5 million won each. In an art world that tends to value seniority, a complete sell-out by a 25-year-old female Oriental painter is an unusual feat.
Reporter Cho Dong-ju, djc@donga.com
[Inset image caption] "Oops (我差)/oops." By Kim Hyun Jung. 2012.
Dong-A Ilbo, Issue No. 28572, Wednesday, June 12, 2013, Section A2, General News