Kim Joon. tats 'n ass

Tattoos mean different things to different people. Who's sporting tattoos in North America? Everybody, it seems. WW2 vets of the Atlantic campaign have those faded blue anchors: their ship name and number blurred beyond recognition. Thirty-somethings, and younger seem to have had a thing for twisty, abstract lines, celtic flourishes, and intertwining barbed wire-type designs. The men have them around their all-too-often soft arms, while the ladies bare the rear runway peeking out just above the low beltline. Then there are the individuals who really saw tattoos as art - faces mix into romantic landscapes, meet up with animals of all sorts, the names of lost loved-ones (with dates like a living memorial) and people they admire. A friend of mine recently got flowers under each of her arms, filling up the little space left that has not been inked, her face and hands aside. basically, for a few generations, tattoos have been visible and commonplace. The fringe, the rebels, the outsiders, the hard-core fight society through new forms of body art (new to my culture, anyway) - scarring, branding, plastic bumps and ridges inserted under the skin. For body "high art", search for Orlan. IF you get grossed out easy, have a garbage can at the ready. She goes to some crazy lengths when she uses her own physical body as a canvas.

To sum up... Western culture has a history with tattoos.
Asia, on the other hand, has a much different history. When you see a person with a far-out ink job in Korea, it means a completely different thing than it does here. Tattoos in Korea (likely most of asia) mean gangster. And there is nothing typically subtle about gangster tattoos. Typically multicoloured figures and animals swirl all down the back, letting everyone know that the bearer is not the type of dude that should be messed with. If a korean gangster movie is to be believed, the pain control associated with spending hundreds of hours getting inked makes elaborate tattoos a badge of honour of sorts. "Normal" people simply don't get tattoos. Bad boys and other such rebels? maybe. Is this changing? of course it is, but it have decades to do before it is even close to mainstream

With that in mind, the work of Kim Joon seems quite a trip. How different the interpretation of his work must be to those of his homeland. Do Koreans even see it as a tattoo; something that is under the skin and permanent, or are they immediately seeing it as a covering - a costume of a different culture?
Tattoos to us, if I may speak for North Americans, are permanent things. They are a part of you - they make up or express parts of an identity. There is no going back from a tattoo - even if someone does got one of those new removal procedures, ther is still a remnant of that old person (like if a friend loses, or more frequently, gains a lot of weight. You cannot help but recall what once was there. It is still there, in a way). The idea of inking the name of a lost relative or friend onto the body takes on such a profound meaning if you think about it in this way: they may be gone, but their trace still exists. They have left an indelible mark, personified in ink.

Henna, i would say, is more common in South Korea. A week of rebellion right after freshman exams - Cool! Suntanning has only in the last couple of years become ACCEPTABLE in Korea, as has the bikini. Dark or blemished skin was left behind when Korea became the first class nation it has become. Peasants and country folk get tanned, civilized people do not. Or something like that.

With all that in mind, i associate the advertising angle in some of Kim's works with looking at his own culture for inspiration. Going back to the comment I made about koreans seeing tattoos as skins or layers (a gangster outfit), rather than a true identity, this could be seen as, as we in the West use tattoos to present elements of ourselves to others, Koreans do this through other means - one of the most popular being fashion.


party-prada
c-print
120cm x 120cm (cm)
2007


bird land-swarovski
90cm x90cm c-print 2008
All the images are taken fromKim Joon's website, where yo ucan also find lots more images.