Sejoon Kim
Green object and one-legged girl, 2017
fine art print, resin, wood
115 x 105 x 2, 10.1 x 6 x 12.2, 35 x 35 x 45 cm
unique
If you think these 'cute' objects have a dark twist, you are right. Sejoon Kim's research started from the question why he, as a Korean, appears to be more drawn to this style than the Europeans around him. This led him to study what 'cuteness' is. For Kim, the root of cuteness is not the so-called protective instinct, but lies in a social and cultural construct. With a rigid hierarchy, its sociocultural context brought a hidden desire for dominance and control.
Kim believes that when something becomes poor, helpless or disabled, people find them cuter since it gives more chances to put them down and feel an inherent sense of superiority and domination. In this sense, cuteness can go aggressive and violent. That is why he creates his own little cute girls. Young girls are considered as the cutest being in Asia as they are innocent and submissive.
He asserts that it is strange that people sometimes feel the pleasure of dominance and control from inanimate objects, as there is no hierarchy between people and objects. He believes that this mechanism has been recently engineered and created by child industry. People, interestingly, derive the same types of stimuli from this man-made cuteness that they can derive from living creatures.
In his making, Kim translates cute objects into cute young girls; an act of anthropomorphism. By doing this, he awakes the nature of cuteness from the objects. Then he destroys these little girls in order to re-create the objects, which may arise with an even stronger cute aesthetic.
In his works he incorporates conflicting qualities, loveliness and darkness. To him these two are not very different in this cute aesthetic. They are always intertwined.
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