Painting Beyond the Screen: Kim Junghwan's World Where Reality and Virtuality Intertwine

Geumsong Art Gallery Invitation Exhibition
Motifs from "Parasite" and "Joker"
Capturing the Human Psyche and the Turmoil of the Times

"It felt as if scenes from a movie were spilling into reality, and the audience experienced the strange sensation of being drawn into the screen. The opening ceremony of artist Kim Junghwan's solo invitation exhibition, held on the 25th at Geumsong Art Gallery in Gunwi-gun, Daegu, was a moment when the boundaries between reality and the virtual world collapsed."

Solo Invitation Exhibition of Artist Kim Junghwan at Geumsong Art Gallery

On one side of the exhibition hall hung an image of the Joker sitting alone in a theater, while another wall displayed a tense scene from the film Parasite, interwoven with contemporary imagery on canvas. Visitors could observe, in front of the artworks, how fragmented images-like shards from a screen-were reassembled into a single narrative.

◆ The Intersection of Reality and Virtuality: Stories Created from Afterimages

Kim Junghwan weaves cinematic afterimages together like a collage to create "screens layered with the passage of time." As he explains, "Modern people feel alienated when left behind by rapid change, and they discover their own reflection in the images on the screen." The figures in his works are thus both self-portraits and portraits of contemporaries.

Even within a single frozen moment, the composition seems to intersect multiple perspectives and timelines, prompting viewers to ask themselves, "Is this reality, or a replicated virtuality?"

◆ The Meeting of Film and Philosophy

While Plato dismissed art as a "shadow of the ideal," Baudrillard predicted an era in which replicas would overwhelm the original. Kim Junghwan's works translate this philosophical debate into the language of contemporary painting.

In particular, the solitude of the Joker overlaps with the static scenes of Edward Hopper, compelling viewers to confront the essential loneliness of human existence. One visitor from Daegu said, "As I looked at the scenes from the screen, they overlapped with my own inner melancholy, and I couldn't look away for a long time."

Upon entering the space, the boundaries between film and reality, original and replica, disappeared. Kim Junghwan's solo exhibition was not simply a place to appreciate paintings, but a space where visitors could physically experience an era in which images replace reality.

Solo Invitation Exhibition of Artist Kim Junghwan at Geumsong Art Gallery

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