Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Since his first solo exhibition at Project Space Sarubia in 1999, he has held numerous solo exhibitions at various institutions both domestically and internationally, including PKM Gallery (Seoul), Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (Aomori, Japan), Art & Public (Geneva, Switzerland), HADA Contemporary (London), DOOSAN Gallery (New York, Seoul), Chapter II (Seoul), and Perigee Gallery (Seoul).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

He has also participated in significant group exhibitions at major museums and venues such as the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai, Union Gallery in London, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris, Korean Cultural Center in Beijing, Rodin Gallery in Seoul, Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Foundation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain in Paris, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Art Sonje Center in Seoul, Gwangju Biennale, Busan Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, and Busan Museum of Art. In 2005, he was selected as a participating artist for the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale.

Awards (Selected)

Ham Jin was selected as a resident artist for the CAN Foundation Berlin Residency in 2012 and the DOOSAN Residency in New York in 2013.

Originality & Identity

Ham Jin constructs a sculptural world that metaphorically reveals the inner lives of isolated beings by starting with materials that are often overlooked—discarded objects, bits of clay, fragments of the human body, dust, and pills. His early series 'Aewan (愛玩)' (2004–) presents compact expressions of modern solitude and alienation through miniature sculptures of human figures hidden in navels or embracing flies. These tiny beings satirize the diminished selfhood of individuals in contemporary society, summoning hidden narratives from the world we tend to overlook.

As his work evolved, Ham Jin expanded his gaze to encompass cities, capital, and systems of power while maintaining a sharp sensitivity toward existential instability and symbolic social structures. Works like City on a Bombshell(2008) condense the chaos of capitalism and political anxiety into miniaturized, humorous spatial allegories—an exploded-view model of society assembled on an actual unexploded missile.

Even as his narrative sensibility shifted toward abstraction after 2011, Ham continued to focus on the layers of sensation and perception embedded in his sculptural process.

Style & Contents

Although Ham Jin began with extremely small and intricate sculptures, the density of their content remains remarkably concentrated. He combines unconventional materials such as rubber clay, pills, plastic, and fingernails to build microcosmic environments, placing them in architectural gaps like stairwells, ceiling corners, and wall crevices.
In his first solo exhibition, 《Imaginative Diary》(Project Space Sarubia, 1999), these spatial insertions encouraged viewers to engage in acts of seeking and close inspection, thus rethinking both the scale and mode of sculptural perception.

From 2011, the ‘Untitled’ series marked a shift to black polymer clay abstract forms that abandoned specific figurative references. Removing color and narrative elements, Ham emphasized the raw materiality and tactile dimension of form itself, allowing the surface texture and shape to carry expressive weight.

By 2020, his works like Mom(2022) began to manifest a freer, non-directed formalism, where variously colored clays formed organically through spontaneous assemblage. This signaled an expanded sculptural approach rooted in intuition, improvisation, and the tactile properties of material itself.

Topography & Continuity

Ham Jin has continually overturned the conventions of sculpture, expanding both its physical scale and psychological reach. Since 《Imaginative Diary》(1999), his consistent ‘microcosmic’ sensibility has transitioned from narrative-based figurative works like the 'Aewan (愛玩)' series and City on a Bombshell(2008) to the non-narrative, material-centric ‘Untitled’ (2011–) series, reflecting a shift from story-driven structures to a language of pure form and sensation.

His participation in the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 marked a turning point, situating his work within the international art discourse. Since then, he has exhibited in cities such as London, Paris, New York, and Beijing, introducing the poetic density of miniature sculpture to a global audience.

Currently, Ham Jin occupies a distinct position in contemporary art through his hybrid sculptural vocabulary that dissolves the boundary between abstraction and figuration, narrative and materiality. His trajectory suggests an ongoing dialogue with global practices of de-structuralized sculpture, offering new possibilities for sensorial and conceptual engagement on an international scale.