The first solo exhibition in France by Korean artist Ham Jin,《MICROmégas》, will be held at Galerie Dohyang Lee in the Marais district of Paris.
 
Introducing the artist’s work to Paris for the first time, the exhibition presents another sculptural perspective on the world through a microscopic scale, showcasing the distinctive visual language Ham Jin has developed through extremely small sculptures and installations.

Sculptural Strategies of the Microscopic World
 
Ham Jin’s works are produced by combining nontraditional materials—such as insects, pills, fingernails, dust, and remnants of everyday life—with synthetic clay. Using these minute substances, the artist constructs extremely small figures and scenes, building a distinctive miniature world.
 
This world is delicate yet strange, at times humorous and at other times filled with an unsettling atmosphere. Within these tiny groups of figures and scenes, human desire and anxiety, violence and vulnerability are simultaneously condensed. Through this microscopic form of sculpture, materials often regarded as trivial are transformed into new units of reality, forming another world out of seemingly insignificant things.

His sculptural approach does not simply remain at the level of producing small objects. Viewers must lower their bodies and move closer in order to see the works, and through this process the visual distance and the mode of viewing itself are readjusted. The tiny forms do not represent a reduced world but instead operate as sculptural devices that reorganize the viewer’s perception and physical relationship to the work.
 
 
 
《MICROmégas》and the Politics of Scale
 
The exhibition title《MICROmégas》suggests a tension between the microscopic and the immense, reduction and expansion, detail and the world. In Ham Jin’s work, scale is not merely a matter of size but is connected to ways of perceiving the world. The small sculpture becomes not a modest form but a sculptural methodology that condenses the world into a concentrated form.

While sculpture and installation since the late twentieth century have increasingly grown in scale—where the occupation of space often determines an exhibition’s visibility—Ham Jin responds to this tendency through extremely small forms. His sculptures reveal themselves only when viewers bend down, lower their gaze, and approach closely, thereby overturning conventional hierarchies of viewing.
 
At the moment when minute materials such as dust, remnants, fingernails, and insects become central rather than monumental structures, the material status of sculpture itself is called into question. Ham Jin’s microscopic sculptures do not function as reduced models of the world but as condensed structures that compress the complexity and tensions of reality.

Ham Jin within the Trajectory of Korean Sculpture
 
Korean contemporary sculpture has undergone various transformations, from the material-centered experiments and structural investigations of the 1970s and 1980s to the expansion of installation and object-based practices after the 1990s.
 
Within this trajectory, Ham Jin can be understood as an artist who shares an interest in materiality while transforming it into an extremely small sculptural unit rather than into large structures or spatial domination.

His work proposes a different direction from the solid material presence, structural completeness, and public-scale sculptural language that Korean sculpture has long pursued. Instead, he establishes a new mode of sculptural existence through private and intimate scale, marginal materials, and narratives that demand close observation.
 
This approach foregrounds the question not only of what sculpture is made from, but also of the scale at which sculpture operates and the kinds of relationships it produces. When the history of Korean sculpture is reconsidered not only in terms of material and structure but also in relation to scale and sensory perception, Ham Jin’s position becomes clearer.

Ham Jin’s current solo exhibition can therefore be read as a case demonstrating how Korean contemporary sculpture can present a distinct sculptural difference within the international art environment.
 
His work does not directly assert Korean identity, yet through a sensitivity to the small and the peripheral, sculptural experimentation with nontraditional materials, and strategies of non-monumental scale, it proposes another direction for contemporary Korean art.

Artist

Ham Jin (b.1978, Seoul) graduated from the Department of Sculpture at Kyungwon University and has been based in Seoul throughout his career. Through extremely small sculptures and installations, he has developed a distinctive sculptural language, gaining international recognition for constructing minute worlds using the remnants of everyday life and unconventional materials.
 
His works compress within small figures the desires and tensions of the human world, as well as its absurdity and melancholy. This condensed imagination expands his work beyond simple miniatures into a fully articulated world.
 
Since gaining attention with his solo exhibition《Imaginative Diary》at Project Space Sarubia in Seoul in 1999, he has continued to expand his artistic practice through solo exhibitions at venues including PKM Gallery, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Doosan Gallery, and HADA Contemporary.
 
His works have also been presented in international institutional exhibitions at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Espace Louis Vuitton, Minsheng Art Museum, and Mori Art Museum. His works are held in institutional collections including the Mori Art Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Galerie Dohyang Lee

Galerie Dohyang Lee, located in the Marais district of Paris, is a contemporary art gallery that has developed exhibition programs centered on experimental practices across diverse media including video, installation, sculpture, and performance. Introducing international and Asian artists together, the gallery has established itself as a platform contributing to contemporary art discourse within the Paris exhibition circuit.
 
《MICROmégas》is conceived as one of the exhibitions focusing on the sculptural world of a Korean artist. The exhibition structure, which presents artist-centered projects with strong concentration, provides an appropriate environment for revealing the sensory tension and narrative embedded in Ham Jin’s microscopic sculpture.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition:《MICROmégas》
Artist: Ham Jin
Dates: April 4 – June 13, 2026
Opening: April 4, 2026, 18:00–21:00
Venue: Galerie Dohyang Lee, 73–75 rue Quincampoix, 75003 Paris, France
Website: https://www.galeriedohyanglee.com