Beschreibung:

Kim Joon (South Korea, Seoul 1966) Bubble - Pink (2005) Unicum Signed and titled on artist label on the reverse C-print on foamboard, 40 x 40 cm Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist N.B.: Within the Korean context Kim Joon’s oeuvre has a particular significance. From various Korean sources a picture emerges of an artist obsessed by the tattoo. Kim identifies with this aspect of Korean counter-culture. He takes a stand against the notion that Koreans until recently considered people with tattoos as social outcasts, and actively seeks emancipation. He designates his artistic motif with an ambiguous term as ‘social tattoo’. In this way he indicates that the manner in which people nowadays appropriate certain symbols to indicate a particular lifestyle is in fact determined by externally imposed conditions that have taken the place of older and more discreet, inner pledges of allegiance. The artist’s work conveys the pressure exerted by commerce and media in a country that derives its identity primarily from the success of a variation of capitalism copied from the United States, in which the position and status of national traditions are unclear. This gigantic battle of forces, in which the human dimension, everyday life and all its small details that really matter, are completely overshadowed, is granted expression in his art. Work by Kim Joon in this way refers to the American Pop art of the nineteen-sixties, of which Andy Warhol was the best known example.