GR1 is a graffiti artist as well as a visual artist. If one is already sufficiently familiar with the artist's work, this description may seem somewhat unnecessary. However, as this statement constitutes a surface-level account of both the artist and the work, it requires closer examination of the meanings embedded between the lines. Taking this necessity as the starting point of discussion also serves as a way to revisit the questions that arose while observing the artist's work over a relatively short period of time.
When the artist first presented their portfolio and explained their primary identity as "graffiti/street art," I found myself preoccupied with overlaying the nature and formal characteristics of graffiti onto the artist's work, or with identifying points of connection and difference. This was by no means an attempt to separate graffiti from visual art or to impose a hierarchy between the two. Nevertheless, when attempting to align the character of graffiti with the artist's current practice, it became impossible not to question the points of friction that inevitably arise between them. Graffiti and street art, which began as unauthorized, non-institutional practices in public spaces while also possessing a long tradition as subculture, are now recognized as genres of visual art and draw the attention of institutions and capital. Meanwhile, the body of work developed within the framework of visual art, under the role of the "artist," is clearly distinct from that of a graffiti artist. How, then, do these two positions interact within the artist's practice? Is there a difference, or is there not? And if graffiti transitions into the institutional framework of fine art, is it possible for it to be accommodated without compromising its inherent identity? This series of unrefined questions reflects a rough yet earnest contemplation of how to understand the artist's recent works, including the new pieces presented in the Artist Residency TEMI outcome exhibition, as well as the trajectory of their future practice. Accordingly, this text seeks to unfold the artist's work through the key concept of "imprint," passing through points of inevitable misreading and misunderstanding that emerge in this process.
Replaying the Name
The artist leaves the mark "GR1 was here" on most of their works. The purpose of this act is clear: it is an explicit sign that asserts the artist as the subject of an image destined to disappear one day. Yet this will to "make visible" is not confined to the act of signing; it permeates the work as a whole. In other words, for the artist, the act of recording who one is (they are) is akin to salvaging oneself (themselves) onto a site of their own choosing, much like a signature. In this way, the artist actively utilizes places such as the walls of the street or the exhibition space, darkness, and interstitial gaps, marking figures who are gradually fragmented and forgotten.
By compelling viewers to shine a light and ultimately confront the faces of migrant workers (<Black Painting - Myanmar Men>, 2023), capturing the ongoing turmoil of a nation still in crisis (<Red Hong Kong>, 2023), commemorating those who perished beneath unspeakably tragic moments (<Let Us Dance Again>, 2024), and extending even to weeds that force their way through concrete to sustain life (<Colliding Grass>, <Garden>, 2025), the artist's practice continues to unfold. Rather than fixing their time under the weight of heavy memories and subjects into a single, static frame, these works bring them into the public realm, reminding us that the time in which they are "placed" remains ongoing, in the present tense. This approach is consistent in works such as <Curtain Call> (2022), which made use of an abandoned house, and Gwangju Is Not Over (2020), initiated to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising. By rendering concrete and referential scenes while using space itself as a supporting structure, the artist calls attention to the fact that past events and memories do not simply remain in the past. In other words, the artist makes clear an attitude that resists the erasure of specific events or existences, seeking instead to replay them here and now.
At this point, let us draw on discussions of graffiti to take a closer look at the artist's work. Jean Baudrillard once described graffiti as an "impulse to speak," arguing that it is not about the delivery of explicit messages but rather a declaration of existence or a residual trace of expression. For Baudrillard, it is precisely this absence of meaning in graffiti that paradoxically produces its intense force.1) Literary scholar Kyle Proehl likewise contends that graffiti constitutes a symbolic destruction of social relations, revealing a tension between text (what is read) and image (what is seen), and that it functions in itself as a symbol of social anxiety and crisis.2) The arguments put forth by these two scholars are certainly effective in understanding GR1 as a graffiti artist. However, in the artist's recent works, it becomes necessary to move beyond the commonly cited perspectives of graffiti as a declarative gesture or as a site of confrontation with social structures, and instead to recognize the persistent emergence of fragmentary images of events and existences.
Thus, in this text, the notion of "imprint" can be understood not as a signature mark like "GR1 was here," but rather as an act of discovering the appearances and names of those whose existences are not readily visible to the artist. Let us consider <People I Know>, a project produced by the artist as a graffiti practitioner (https://peoplebygr1.blogspot.com/). This project takes the form of an archival website titled people, i know, where photographs are uploaded showing faces of individuals the artist has encountered, inscribed across various sites and spaces. In cities throughout Asia, such as Seoul, Busan, and Hong Kong, these figures are temporarily sedimented. Although we cannot know what relationships or personal histories exist between the artist and these individuals, what matters more is that the artist leaves their names alongside the images. The moment of contemplating who these familiar yet unfamiliar names and faces might be clearly constitutes a key strategy that runs throughout the artist's practice. For this reason, the artist's paintings appear to me less as acts of drawing than as acts of inscribing existence itself. In reality, works and images in the street or the exhibition space are ultimately destined to leave those sites. Nevertheless, the artist seems to trust the possibility of narratives extending outward as long as the images endure, bearing their presence like a beacon within the street or the exhibition space.
The artist's position on this issue can be examined in greater detail in <Aftermath> (2024). <Aftermath> gathers pieces of wood that were used and left behind by other artists, filling them with different languages and arranging them like puzzle fragments that can never be assembled into a whole. Regarding <Aftermath>, the artist states: "What matters in this work is a way of looking at the traces left behind after events or conflicts within a social context as physical forms. (...) The remaining and discarded pieces of wood emerge as unfinished spaces that contain stories overlooked in that process. By layering spray color onto them, I leave traces of graffiti and graffiti culture. (...) Like graffiti that began in abandoned spaces within the city streets, the work grants a new perspective to what has been marginalized and calls back stories that were on the verge of disappearing."3) Just as with their graffiti practice, the artist already knows what kind of force is capable of reactivating stalled events and the time bound up within them.
Speaking (Filling) Through to the End
In order to call forth fragmented and forgotten existences, the artist fills the spaces permitted to them, or deliberately chosen, with those figures. Whether it concerns an unfinished history or moments that expose the contradictions of unconscious structures of consumption (<Byebye bebe>, 2021), the artist feels compelled to continually fill space with the injustices they have perceived. That is, the artist densely covers exhibition spaces or other sites, graffiti-like and without gaps, with texts and images that allude to subjects placed within injustice and the narratives imposed upon them.
<Let Us Dance Again> marks the artist's own way of mourning those who lost their lives in a tragedy by tagging texts associated with youth. Within a space where 196 circular canvases are installed, each individual text cannot be read clearly. Instead, viewers are required to perceive them from multiple angles as the images proliferate and expand across the space. The new work <Garden> (2025), presented at the Artist Residency TEMI outcome exhibition, places a variety of weeds painted on more than twenty polygonal plywood panels across the gallery floor. Interspersed among them are triangular objects composed of remnants generated during the plywood production process. Colored with spray paint, these elements function like obstacles as viewers move through the weed-filled space, ultimately creating an environment in which these nameless plants cannot be avoided. In this way, the artist's creation of spaces saturated with subjects becomes a method of affirming their existence to the viewer. Through this process, the artist continually imagines and considers how the audience will come to "know" a given moment and time through the visual field they have constructed.
Among the many works, the final one I would like to address is <Balcon Project> (2023, hereafter <Balcon>). Like <Aftermath>, <Balcon> consists of unexpected "masses" created by assembling pieces of Styrofoam collected from the street and spraying or bursting paint onto their surfaces. Fragments of waste produced by capitalism, the city, and individuals are cut down, compressed, and colored, acquiring different skins through this process. The artist explains that the key word that drew their attention in <Balcon> was "by-product," and that, connected to the attitude developed while making graffiti in the streets, this project represents not a mere formal shift but an expansion of their practice.4) In <Balcon>, I welcomed an approach different from the artist's previous method of revealing and inscribing the names of subjects, and at the same time found myself able to step back from the rough questions posed earlier. Whereas the artist's earlier works focused on identifying and inscribing who the subjects were, <Balcon> embraces the emergence of unexpected outcomes through graffiti-like actions and creates a place for individual objects that are no longer fragments. Within this space, where the characteristics of graffiti and a sculptural landscape become entangled, the viewer is no longer invited to search for "who is present." Instead, a monument of by-products, covered in the various textures produced by spray paint and Styrofoam, surrounds the viewer. Confronted with <Balcon>, which conveys meaning through the arrangement of materiality and surface in a manner unique to what graffiti can do, my earlier questions, which had leaned heavily toward defining the artist's identity, were finally able to recede. Whether graffiti, fine art, tagging, or painterly gesture, the artist simply seeks ways to bring fragments of subjects, events, and scenes up to the surface and into encounter with the viewer. In doing so, the artist assumes the role of an image-maker who captures the fissures inherent in the world and forms new relations within those gaps.
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1) Robert M. Maniquis, Jean Baudrillard, "Interview with Jean Baudrillard: Catastrophic, but Not Serious", Baudrillard Now (Vol. 2. Issue 2), accessed Nov 17, 2025, https://baudrillard-scijournal.com/interview-with-jean-baudrillard-catastrophic-but-not-serious/
2) Kyle Proehl, "On the Concept of graffiti", SAUC Journal, vol.10, no. 2(2024), 91.
3) Artist's note for <Aftermath>, GR1
4) GR1, email to Kim Mi-jeong, October 1, 2025.