Transfiguration - by Kim Jun Sik (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Kim Jun Sik is a contemporary Korean artist.he fuses the Eastern logic of "plucking branches" with Western popular culture icons on the same pictorial surface, forming a unique visual.

Transfiguration collects representative works of contemporary artist Kim Jun Sik. Kim Jun Sik is a "tester of viewing" who navigates between Eastern and Western visual logics. Before this collection, his painting underwent multiple transformations--from hyperrealist still lifes to crushed soup cans, from a painted nail that deceives the eye to superheroes perched on plucked branches. "Visual Paradise" is not only the central theme of this monograph but also the mature manifestation of the "Cross-Cultural Pop Plucking of Branches" methodology he progressively established from 2015 onward. His works are rarely arranged along a strict chronological line; instead, he simultaneously experiments with different cultural symbols and pictorial languages, recoding popular imagery through handcrafted realism and advancing his own visual grammar step by step.

About the Author

Kim Jun Sik is a contemporary Korean artist. He graduated from the Department of Painting at Hongik University and later pursued further studies at the Graduate School of Industrial Design, Shih Chien University in Taipei. He currently focuses on painting. His work approaches everyday objects from an extreme closeup perspective - crushed soup cans, peeled banana skins, pruned plum branches - using hyperrealist manual skill to create visual illusions. At the same time, he fuses the Eastern logic of "plucking branches" with Western popular culture icons on the same pictorial surface, forming a unique visual language of "Cross-Cultural Pop Plucking of Branches." His works have been widely exhibited both domestically and internationally: solo exhibitions include Between the Visible and the Invisible in Shanghai and Shenzhen (2018), Between Vision and Illusion at Aka Automotive Arts in Taipei (2025), as well as group exhibitions such as the Web3 Inaugural ARTX Digital Art Exhibition at M+ Museum in Hong Kong (2026), among others.