Hyung joo
kim
Each work begins with the scale of a coat-like form and the drawing that lives on its surface. After graduating from Hongik University and completing graduate studies, I devoted myself to refining a personal method with steady, almost ritual focus. The paper dolls I played with as a child remained with me like old friends. During a long recovery after typhoid, I learned beside my mother and found genuine comfort in simply being able to touch paper. When I returned to paper through my university classes, it felt like reuniting with someone I had missed for a long time. My Dakjong practice demands time, ingenuity, and uncompromising cleanliness. Through repeated cycles of boiling, washing, and filtering, the material is prepared and shaped with carved wooden molds until it becomes a self-supporting paper form. The work is completed with the concentrated intensity of a performance: a sustained state of attention built through perseverance, tapping, and an unshakable hand. There is no margin for error in a material made only by water, sunlight, and human hands. Paper records every decision. In that honesty, discipline becomes a way of making, and patience becomes the path to precision.
Selected Works
Hyungjoo Kim’s artistic practice is a profound exploration of “Communication” rooted in the Spirit of Korea. Her work bridges the gap between traditional Korean aesthetics and universal human experiences through the tactile language of Hanji (Korean mulberry paper), fiber, and mixed media. Deeply influenced by her personal triumph over illness and the devoted love of her mother, Kim visualizes themes of healing, the maternal bond (“heartbeat”), and the harmony of nature. Her portfolio spans immersive installations, bas-relief paper sculptures, and performance art, all unified by a meditative silence reminiscent of “bamboo swaying in the wind”
Hanji Works
Kim Hyungjoo transforms dakjongi (mulberry paper) from a support into a sculptural material shaped by time and touch. Built through layering, pressing, and drying, the surface shifts with light-revealing fiber, relief, and traces of the hand-linking Korean tradition to contemporary sensibility.
The Emile Bell
Hyungjoo Kim created these bells to symbolize the tranquility and beauty evoked by the sound. One can feel the meditative moment in the installation site, the physical and sensing of art. One day her mother and Huyngjoo Kim visited the Buddhist temple for the 3000 bows. During this visit, Hyungjoo Kim heard and experienced the pinging sound of a bell, the Bell Emile. In Korean, Emile is the also the sound of an infant crying for his / her mother. That sound touched her heart incredibly. Ever since then, Ms. Kim had been recreating this sound of the bell the whole of her artistic life.
Installation
Hyungjoo Kim’s installation practice is a sculptural exploration that expands the theme of “communication” through space, sound, and materiality. Moving beyond painting or discrete objects, she constructs environments in which viewers are invited to dwell and breathe, allowing them to encounter invisible emotions, memories, and processes of healing. At the core of this practice lies a distinctly Korean spiritual ethos-humanity, harmony, and freedom.
Painting
Hyungjoo Kim’s painting practice serves as a direct conduit for her “inner voice,” communicating universal themes of humanity, nature, and healing through abstract expressionism. Moving beyond the structural discipline of her fiber art, her canvases utilize a fluid mix of acrylic, ink stick, crayon, and watercolors to explore the concept of “Cosmic Circulation” and the rhythm of life.
Drawings & Studies
This collection offers an intimate glimpse into the genesis of Hyungjoo Kim’s artistic practice. Rooted in her academic background in Costume Design (MFA, Hongik University), these works on paper serve as both independent expressions and architectural blueprints for her large-scale installations and fashion art performances.
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