Bong Jung Kim’s world of oriental philosophy merged with western aesthetics ~

CONVALESCENCE ~

In Bong Jun Kim’s Cyber Addiction series, the artist’s expression may exclusively convey erotic love. However, the symbolism of love used by the artist is not merely arbitrary in meaning, but rather multifaceted and expansive in definition. For the artist, the meaning of love if likened to “pure love that encompasses both Eros and Agape, of the nakedness in the Garden of Eden that had no shameful concept related to the nakedness itself.” The variations behind this elusive concept also contains narcissistic love, as well as childhood unrequited love, exemplified in Hwang Soon-won’s book of Rain Showers. Love can be embodied through and beyond the physical, such as the love in the womb of all mothers in the world who endure the pain of childbirth to give birth to life. Furthermore, it could even mean the love of the Creator who created the sky and the earth by dividing water and water into the universe itself. In his creative process he explores the existential conditions we face in the 21st century. One can observe that the elements of love, lust, and longing appear and reappear as subject matter even between the series that vary stylistically. As such, the artist’s expression of love is symbolic and expansive.

Kim has broadened the horizons of this creative undertakings by expressing his interest in a desire-control disease such as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) through a series that features phenomena of cyber addictions. Based on the understanding that all good phenomena in the world produce negative results if excessive, he pays attention to the ambivalent nature of sharing information, enjoying and relieving stress on the Internet. By doing so, the artist expresses both fascination and concern for pervasive social/economic issues such as excessive internet shopping, FOMO phenomena through Internet SNS, cybersex, and low birth rates. The Cyber Addiction Series, The Poppy Series, and the magazine cutout series that he created later are representative of such intentions. By examining the problems of the conditions of love, lust, and longing as the subject of his work, bong Jung Kim lays down the deep wounds, negative habits, and ruptured centers of human beings on a canvas and expresses the elements of negative emotions such as obsession, anger, addiction, shame, loneliness, and fear. He then reconciles them with the healing elements of honesty, forgiveness, passion, and faith. His work is filled with his sincere quest for understanding and amazing zeal, without any unnecessary embellishment.

(below pieces were created to emphasize the masks we wear, the pandemic, and tech presence during the pandemic, while we lose or keep human connection… )

Bong Jung Kim’s works are housed in prestigious public institutions such as the Crete Museum of art in Greece, as well as in numerous private collections. Kim’s art explores a philosophical relationship and quest to the subject matter of love, desire, and longing, bridging the gesture and expression of his body and soul. the works have sprouted from a deep internal struggle to cope with emotions of love, lust, and longing and reconciling them. These are the most essential emotions that make an individual human, and the self-awareness, control, and mastery of those emotions make a person reach a higher level of consciousness. The artist employs these essential emotions as the subject of his paintings and share the healing attributes (process and results) of his art with viewers.

~ By Curator Inhee Iris Moon

Review by Art Critic Ekin Erkan

~Bong Jung Kim’s Convalescence exhibition at Kate Oh’s Gallery deals with addiction and technology. Throughout his career, Kim has preoccupied himself with addiction vis-a-vis symbology in a multiplicity of ways. This is most pronounced in Kim’s Poppy series, which takes up the poppy as a painterly subject, but, rather, than veridically reproduce the poppies by way of screen print, as Warhol did with his flowers, Kim makes us of the gestural, drip-like composition of Abstract Expressionism. The splattered poppy figures speak to Kim’s interest in symbolism, which is markedly continued in Kim’s works that deal more explicitly with digitality and our mechanical coupling with machines. This is the case with works like State of being black, State of being Gold, and State of being Blue. These three works pair copper electric wires swept in serpentine rings, dark-green computer chips, and abstract-yet-recognizable machines layered upon Rothko-like color fields. The dialectical relationship here is set between the abstract, which corresponds to the felt phenomenology of navigating the world as emotion-bond creatures, and the representational, which corresponds to the didactic world of digital technology and coding.

Kim’s paintings which overlay such abstract machine - whirring, buzzing motors and computer chips that bleed a hair of wires - upon crimson, purple, and flaxen poppies underscore Kim’s bleak message. The context working in the background is, of course, the dependency-based relationship that we have with our cell phones and other digital devices. Indeed, as many psychological studies have evinced, our general attention span has been severely compromised thanks to these digital technologies. Kim’s thesis that we are addicted to our technological devices is not a new one, nor does it intend to be - however, it tells this story from a distinct angle, and unspools abstraction appropriately, such that we are not brow-beaten with literal messaging. This means that Kim approaches a familiar worry from a novel point of view, doing so quite admirably.

By examining the problems of the conditions of love, lust, and longing as the subject of his work, Bong Jung Kim lays down the deep wounds, negative habits, and ruptured centers of human beings on a canvas and expresses the elements of negative emotions such as obsession, anger, addiction, shame, loneliness, and fear. He then reconciles them with the healing elements of honesty, forgiveness, passion, and faith. His work is filled with his sincere Quest for understanding and amazing zeal, without any unnecessary embellishment.

Furthermore, Bong Jung Kim’s artwork begins to focus on the existential crisis of technology in relation to the environment. While his artwork addresses the beauty of nature, it also begins to address the issue of technology’s effect in climate change, global warming, and the environment. ..While Kim uses certain pieces to create artwork - and in ways, recycles tech and motherboards… he calls us back to the essence and truth of Mother Nature ~ the Essence of Nature vs. the Essence of Technology…. while also addressing global problems, including Climate Change - and technology’s role in relation to Environmental Issues. The recurring question of Technologies responsibility ~ and global responsibility ~ when it comes to nature is important to evaluate as well as to change for the better ~MEGA & THE GRENCHUS FOUNDATION

About the Artist:

by Curator Iris Inhee Moon ~

Bong Jung Kim (b.1962) graduated from Seoul National University College of Art and immigrated to the United States in 1990. He has been active in the US, Korea, Hong Kong, and Greece for the past 30 years. The artist is best known for his cyber addiction series, exhibited in many renowned museums and institutions such as the Queens Museum of Art.

Bong Jung Kim created his painterly contemporary art series, adding materials such as broken computer accessories, vinyl, sand, tree branches, and magazine cutouts to the traditional oil and acrylic mediums of painting. Crown Series, Robot Series, Space Series, and Poppy Series are reflective of his approach.

bong Jung Kim’s works are housed in prestigious public institutions such as the Crete Museum of Art in Greece, as well as in the numerous private collections. Kim’s art explores a philosophical relationship and quest to the subject matter of love, desire, longing, bridging the gesture and expression of his body and soul. The works have sprouted from a deep internal struggle to cope with emotions of love, lust, and longing, and to reconcile them.

These are the most essential emotions that make an individual human, and the self-awareness, control, and mastery of those emotions make a person reach a higher level of consciousness. The artist employs these essential emotions as the subject of his paintings and shares the healing attributes (process and results) of his art with viewers.

“The feeling of ink spreading as if leaving a lingering impression express the way addiction seeps into our consciousness.” ~ Bong Jung Kim

(below pieces focus on the human body, in relation to cyberlife, and the female body, lust, longing, and love and/or cyber obsession and addiction).

(To purchase any of the artwork in this post, Please Reach Out To KATE OH GALLERY HERE