Readymade Flea Market
2020 - Painting (Painting)
100 x 130 cm
Hun Kyu Kim
Readymade Flea Market is part of a series of works developed by Hun Kyu Kim. While the artist’s previous work drew a parallel between capitalism’s inherent social violence and the evolution of weaponry, Hun Kyu Kim now focuses on political nihilism and how to overcome it. In this new work he uses the metaphor of 3D Graphic Space to represent our current reality. In a way similar to Similarly to world simulation theories and Nick Bostrom’s thought experiment, a computer creates the reality in which animal characters exist. Following Bostrum’s view, the world we inhabit is nothing but a simulation that future humans have created in an attempt to reproduce the history of humanity. With better computing power, we could accurately stimulate all the neuronal connections in the human brain, thereby tricking every inhabitant of this simulated world into believing that the simulation is real. Due to the relatively fast increase of the power of computers in our societies, it is statistically more likely that we are in one of the many simulations rather than in the original one. The term coined for such a simulation is “Ancestor simulation”. In the simulation pictured by Hun Kyu, the overheating of the Graphics Processing Unit that nourishes the simulation and gives it consistency represents the overheating of our post liberal economies and the contradictions that it creates. Its failing creates chaos and spatial inconsistencies. Animals in the middle of panic buying populate the canvas, in a way that echoes the very real situation that our societies have experienced in the past months. As the world around them collapses and the simulation increasingly fails, anthropomorphic animal characters fight to buy goods that might very well be worthless. Televisions filling the shelves of the supermarket show that these shelves are empty, the artist’s comment on the information age and the priority of production in the age of late-capitalism. In a world where individuals are reduced to mere consumers, the only behaviour left in the face of danger is to frenetically shop, as the reference to Barbara Kruger’s 1987 foundational work « I shop therefore I am » shows. We recognize in the painting elements that are all too familiar to us, such as the surgical masks and gloves or the weird focus on toilet paper.
Inspired by the tradition of Korean silk painting, Hun Kyu Kim crafts poignant allegorical pictures employing an almost limitless range of historical inquiry. Vast intricate narrative universes, laced with intense imagination, reflect upon a post-globalized world grappling with the effects of technological neoliberalism. Deep hierarchical structures, extreme belief systems and political polemics are displayed through detailed narratives often driven by a frenzy of anthropomorphic proxies. Time and space conflate, portraying an eternal state of emergency, where violent outbursts aren’t merely accidents but normative traits of social interaction. Commercial commodities and pop cultural tropes (from Pokémons, to selfies, to art) place the landscape in an ostensibly fantastical world grounded in the realities of the contemporary condition. Kim’s work functions as an anomaly of sorts, which is simultaneously illustrative but emblematic, detailed but diagnostic, cute but critical.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Lam Tung Pang
2013Lam Tung Pang created Sketches from train ride Chicago to San Francisco during his travels through the United States researching American curatorial strategies for representing traditional Chinese painting in museums and cultural institutions...
© » ART AND CAKE
In the Artist’s Studio – A Photo Essay – Art and Cake June 20, 2023 June 20, 2023 Author In the Artist’s Studio – A Photo Essay Julie Lipa https://julielipaartist.com/ @julielipaartist My shop only looks this clean and tidy after I’ve finished a piece and I need a clean slate to start something new...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
The #TenYearChallenge: M1 CONTACT Contemporary Dance Festival | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Left: Silvia Yong, photographed by Tan Ngiap Heng, for Contact 2010 Right: Shintaro Oue in "Dan-Su", which will be performed at M1 Contact 2019, photographed by Matron March 21, 2019 Over the past decade, contemporary dance in Singapore has blossomed...
© » KADIST
Eric Dizambourg
2010Eric Dizambourg’s film presents a bucolic and ludicrous world used as a background for a character who is an actor as well as a performer...
© » KADIST
Ashmina Ranjit
2020While most of Ashmina Ranjit’s work has been large-scale installations, often immersive and site-specific, the series Hair Warp – Travel Through Strand of Universe is a brilliant concentration of both her beliefs and aesthetic...
© » ROYAL ACADEMY
In the studio: Peter Barber RA | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts Peter Barber RA © Morley von Sternberg FRIBA In the studio: Peter Barber RA Read more Become a Friend In the studio: Peter Barber RA By Sarah Handelman Published 27 July 2023 The architect renowned for his social housing projects operates from a converted 19th-century shop in King’s Cross...
© » KADIST
John Houck
2013John Houck’s brown- , sienna- and golden-toned composition, Untitled #185, 65, 535 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 16 colors , features densely packed lines of color moving diagonally across the creased page...
© » KADIST
James Collins
2013These two large format untitled paintings by James Collins feature the artist’s hallmark technique, which transforms abstraction into an optical illusion that creates dimension, space, and mass...
© » ART AND CAKE
Displacement, Disconnection & Disruption: Alternate Perceptions of the Diasporic Experiences – Art and Cake June 12, 2023 June 15, 2023 Author Displacement, Disconnection & Disruption: Alternate Perceptions of the Diasporic Experiences Fatemeh Burnes “Wonderland” Displacement, Disconnection & Disruption: Alternate Perceptions of the Diasporic Experiences By Betty Ann Brown We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
Podcast | The Year in Review 2023: the biggest stories and the best shows | The Week in Art Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search The Week in Art podcast The Year in Review 2023: the biggest stories and the best shows From the British Museum thefts to the consequences in art and heritage of the Israel-Hamas war Sponsored by Hosted by Ben Luke ...
