Skin texture, bracelet, 109 x 104 x 37 mm, silicone, 2017

The starts with a concept of new jewellery where body decoration effect is substituted by the skin itself through the transformation of the body skin. The aim is to show a surreal body that opens toward a new visual concept through the transformation of the skin which looks like the transplantation of a jewel into the skin.

Skin texture 2, brooch, around 90 x 46 x 27 mm, silicone, stainless steel, 2017

As ‘Animal Becoming,’ a philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, states, my skin is opened with a new response by transforming it through an actual skin of animals. Through a transformation between animal and human, changes can be brought to the source of my behaviors. Such transformed body expression may have the significance to perceive a new self and find independence.

The produced through a medium called silicone has the form of jewel carved in the realistic wrinkles of the skin. Although the body wears an jewellery, the jewellery is so similar to the skin that the jewellery looks the same as the skin. However, the existing skin is coated with a foreign form. It is generated from the desire to expand the self through the transformed skin ‘the Second Skin’.

Wrapped skin_brooch 4, pig intestine, copper 63 x 105 x 25 mm

The brooch series of are an evolution of intention to express ‘extension of skin’, where ‘the second skin’ is substituted by the skin of non-human. I wanted to express the form, where body skin itself can become an jewellery, as by preparing the foundation of body concept which is expressed as jewellery and has significance. appears as the body skin which has changed to skin of organism and this means an embodiment of opening body skin to new activity and response by modifying self body skin through actual surface of animal.

Wrapped skin_brooch 9, pig intestine, copper 35 x148 x 35 mm, 2017

Wrapped skin_brooch 7, pig intestine, copper 103 x 72 x 32 mm, 2017

Also, by replacing skin of reptile by body skin and contraposing as a skin of other species, I wanted to find independent body through empathy or differentiation. In other words, I wanted to show new significance of jewellery through the beauty of modified body. A medium of skin expression, the membrane of animal’s inter organ, has also the concept of skin as jewellery through the transforming of internal skin of body into external skin in the non-human body. This is a finding of another self in the process of existing skin’s distortion into a new one.

Wrapped skin_brooch 1, pig intestine, copper, 2017

Wrapped skin_brooch 2, pig intestine, copper 90 x 68 x 28 mm, 2017

A subtle exchange between reality and ideal through an ironic skin modification is embodied into a new idea. Such a displacement between the subject and the object is not only a process of observing self, finding an independent body, and actualizing the desire mechanism, but also a play that enjoys a formative expression.

Second languae 2, brooch, metal mesh, resin, 2015

‘Second language’ is showing this person’s intuitive formative language like drawing. This person intended to discover a potential which will become something more than a form with the possibility of a form which changes in intuitive perception The ‘second language’ is organic creases consequent on materials. This is the process of being transformed into the endless dynamic form through organic windingness, crookedness and folding by constructing an abstract form using organic creases consequent on materials.

Brooch 05, Jewellery as Second Skin

Kyeok KIM