Sungju Ham

b. 1990 | South Korea

Sungju Ham’s realism goes beyond realism in the sense of the word (precisely representing things as they appear) and exists in a world beyond the screen. In other words, it is characterized by depicting in various ways the changing forms and newly felt meanings of images played on digital media screens, from popular culture and games popularized in the 90s to recent video contents, when reproduced through the artist’s hands. The simply flat images in the liquid crystal come to life in a tactile and three-dimensional way through his hands, and in this process, the same scene comes to the viewer with a different meaning or makes the viewer imagine what happened next.

Just as realism has been practiced in different ways, such as reproducing the sensation of seeing things or exposing the absurdity inherent in the current society, the new methodology shown by Sungju Ham is a realism with contemporaneity, and he is one of the new generations leading korean figurative painting.