YG Entertainment had many fans doing a double take when the jacket picture of 2NE1's "I Am The Best" was revealed yesterday, unveiling colorful four cartoon caricatures of the quartet. To compliment their fierce image, each girl was drawn with smokey make-up, wielding brightly-colored sub-machine guns and pistols in hand. So the question is, who was behind these cartoons?
After widespread curiosity sparked regarding the identity of the artist behind the design, Mari Kim revealed on her personal blog that she was the one that had created the four works.
As a graphic artist rooted in the "pop surrealism" art form, Kim used her eye-popping style to design the striking artwork for 2NE1's jacket image.
In a 2009 interview, Kim revealed that many had dubbed her art style as "sensational" and "frightening", and that she herself considers her works to be paintings instead of characters. "I like cult and zombie movies and I'm a metal rock lover," she explained. "I want to express this identity through my work."
Kim received a bachelor's degree in multimedia and a master's in animation studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Since then, she has been invited to the Berlin Pictoplasma Art Festival, which focuses on contemporary character design and art. In 2007, her collaborative video art piece, "Goldfish in a throat" was screened at the Busan International Video Festival. Nowadays, she gives lectures at Chungkang College of Cultural Industries and is preparing to publish a book this fall.
She has also collaborated with Young Mean Kang to produce a MV for SORO (??)'s "Beengle Beengle":
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You can check out more of Mari Kim's artwork here.
Source: Kim Mari's blog, designdb, The ChungDae Post
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