Kim Hyunjun’s works centre on value creation within art and society. Kim questions contemporary notions of value in a commoditized society by focusing purely on the immaterial – packaging – that which is frequently gifted in society and regularly discarded. His sculptures grant immediate worth to utilitarian materials. Dotted with bar codes, address labels and trademarks, Kim brings this protective cardboard into being: a chair, a shoe, and at times the priceless, a household pet such as a dog, begins to take shape. These surreal objects and beings come to embody the confusion and conflict of a modern consumerist society. Kim believes consumerism to be one of the most important changes in modern society. If society is bound by its consumerist products, then is it effectively freed by its counterpart? He deconstructs notions of the immaterial and draws attention to the decidedly arbitrary assignments of value.

“I don’t look at these trails of consumerism superficially; rather, I look at it as objects that can best express the conflict and confusion of society and modern beings," he says.

Courtesy of HADA Contemporary.