Artist Kim Joon
Year: 2015
Medium: Digital print (edition 1 of 5)
Dimensions: 47.4H x 75.6W in
Original Artwork Price: $28,000
Kim’s exploration of tattoo culture has its roots in his time in the military, where he tattooed his peers, and he references the practice in order to grapple with issues of taboo, image obsession, spirituality, and the aestheticization of the body. Kim Joon sees tattooing as a manifestation of the conflicting forces of all identity formation, which is a process of both determination and agency, the effect of internal and external forces that often signify on the skin as race, gender, normality, or dissent.
Using digital software and a large archive of imagery, he combines a variety of textures, colors, body parts and asian motifs that result in striking compositions. With these fragmented images he is able to accomplish visually dynamic compositions that become unified, exposing tension in challenging opposites. It is within the patterns themselves that Joon’s exploration, free from narrative, is transcended beyond excess in societal values and is faced with the need for individual expression. Who we are vs. Who we want to be.
“I see skin, or in some cases the monitor, as an extension of the canvas”. My work starts with the thought that most people start from resolving personal desires of the flesh. The body never satisfies. I started working digitally when the physical space was a constraint for continuing creating. Digital work was a great alternative and freedom because working digitally only needs the space for the monitor."- Kim Joon
