Ham Jin’s early work was a satirical portrayal of our reality with subminiature figures arranged with real things. Afterwards, Ham showcased his own distinctive modeling idioms through a connection of black monochrome abstract images. He has recently been working on disclosing a broad spectrum of colors, breaking away from his previous monochrome practice. On show at this exhibition Mom are three-dimensional pieces characterized by a diversity of forms and hues. This essay will be a review of such practices as well as an investigation of what he still sticks to and what he attempts newly. This study will also look into his artistic attitude, focusing primarily on what appears on the surface of his work. I think changes in such works and their elemental meaning can be naturally understood in this process.

Ham has relied on simplicity in making his pieces. The main material of his work is polymer clay. The salient feature of this material is malleability or convenience that enables one to make something naturally and easily by a process of pressing, mixing, compressing, again spreading, and connecting pieces without using any specific tool. He has insisted on this material because it is easy to manipulate with his hands without depending on any gadget. The tool used for very minute, delicate work has been his own hands, or more exactly, his fingertips. Traces of his fingerprints are often discovered in his works, just as traces of one’s creative actions can be often found in his modeling work with his hands.
First, he kneads and mixes pieces cut off from colored clay little by little, and then spreads them widely and attaches them to a basic frame like a thin wire or a wooden skewer. Next, he forges a form by attaching and extending pieces with his hands and piercing them with a tool like a needle. Finally, he fires and fixes them. There is no special rule in this facture. It varies depending on the moment when the sense of his fingertips touching clay is blended with what he sees. What he has to do in this process is to instinctively choose the direction he has to go based on the forms that are built up as pieces of clay are added one by one. In addition to this, the patterns of naturally different colors in layers work as a determinant for a sensuous choice. He also perceives his own fingerprints as one of the formative elements of his works and is thus concerned about whether he leaves or erases them. On the contrary, he has a loose attitude to complete his work abruptly. This change serves as an opportunity to create more complex, multifarious forms. His more elaborate, selective renditions have viewers concentrate on his work’s abstract expressions alongside the entire image. The images in his recent pieces composed of rather improvisational, intuitive colors and forms appear both figurative and abstract.

At this point, let’s talk about his works. What is visible in his works is a wide array of living things such as figures, animals, and trees as well as non-living things such as stones and water. These alone look like objects or abstract scenes. These diverse elements are made, springing from his determination to create some world. As his facture reviewed above shows, the materials and production methods he has consistently maintained seem to be something to gain almighty abilities like God creating the world. This is why the exhibit title Mom is thought to be referring to Great Mother Earth emblematic of maternal instinct, life force, creativity, and nature. Human society has kept a myth that the world was created by God in addition to nature’s life force. A myth is a world full of other living things, straddling the reality created by transcendental power beyond the bounds of human ability.

Accordingly, its space and time are not merely imaginary, but leave some names and traces on natural objects as evidence for such a narrative. Such creation myths have incessantly been inherited to future generations through religions and tales. However, any mythic imagination found in his work is based on his own personal experience, rather than on any concrete characters in a myth or any painful event like the Passion. He just puts emphasis on an act of creation that newly makes what’s nothing in this world and completely recreates the original. Of course, what comes out from my inside cannot be viewed as my own thing in its entirety. The present ‘I’ has derived from a connection with innumerable parents I have before I was born, and a combination of intangibly transmitted social, cultural information. In addition to this, the artist sufficiently encapsulates his personal childhood memories and influences of what he has experienced in this world. And yet, what he highlights is not any comic or tragic pleasure of a narrative brought about by a special event he has gone through. He concentrates rather on his creative activity itself about how to condense such various empirical elements and make them exist again.

If so, how about his creations? His creations consisting of a diversity of images and colors look like uncanny monsters combined with living things, microorganisms, or cells. Or, they seem to just be mottled abstract clods. Such disorderly yet intricate images and colors feel like a neurotic expression of fear and anxiety he feels toward the world, displaying the pellucid beauty any fantastic, mythic object retains. Seeing his works before our eyes, they appear attractive rather than embarrassing. In this exhibition, he also displays his pieces as freestanding works on pedestals, not arranging them in the way he did previously. His creations in the venue are not placed as constituents for the infrastructure of the world, but loom as small and large individual beings each of which has their own universe. This is because each of Ham’s works is filled with a desire to become something in the process of kneading and honing them, and the artist works to make each piece exist in that way, depending on the material’s physical property, color, form, texture, and his fingertips. So nothing is the same in his works. Each piece appears replete with life force. The object condensed in this way shows the something different from presence couched in the sculptural sense of volume. Thus, his work concentrates on a mix of colors, changes in form, and the flow of added pieces as well as any expression revealed on the surface. Accordingly, we view such works from an omniscient viewpoint as the artist does. And this action of the viewer moves on to a new dimension, furtively passing through an invisible passage through each object in the gallery.

This work approximates the question the artist asks himself, “Who am I?” An act of making an artwork by ‘I’ is seen as lending some form to his identity. Let’s expand this to the sense of looking down from a higher viewpoint, as the artist does. Born by chance, we are living by chance. We try to live subjectively of course. Our lives flow in this way, enduring, filling, and emptying everything. This is to the artist inexplicable and disorderly. Just as one secures their own identity through this process of life, Ham produces his creations packed with new life force, tracing through his material’s physical properties with his fingertips. His finger movements are an action that takes place in the ritual space and time of creation. Ham creates a dimension different from reality through this. All the same, this is an outgrowth of our common comprehension we have accumulated and our experience with a host of creatures and things often found in our surroundings. Therefore, his work is something brought about through an overlap of several dimensions and layers encompassing our reality. This is also evidence of his life and views, gazing lovingly at all living things.

As reviewed thus far, Ham is making a variety of hybrid creations in visible forms by tapping into life’s invisible force. His work appears disorderly yet beautiful, condensing infinite energy within it. This is different from his previous work’s subminiature form, precision, and formative amusement couched in black idioms. His facture in this exhibition has the viewer take note of the action of producing creations with a new life force based on the sensations he feels with his fingertips. So, the work on show at this exhibition can be referred to as ‘fingertip sculpture.’ This art show will serve as an opportunity for us to come across microcosmos through forms with diverse images and colors, brimming with life force, and fashioned with his fingertips.

References

• [비평] 천의 얼굴을 드러내는 손끝 – 함진 개인전 《엄마》
  [Critique] Fingertips Unmasking a Thousand Faces – Ham Jin’s Solo Exhibition 《Mom》)