@j2brand.art @artistbonkoony Bon Koo Artist Profile Bon Koo majored in painting at HongIk University in Seoul, South Korea, before moving to New York over two decades ago to study Theology—an uncommon path that shaped his ongoing exploration of compassion, instinct, and the spiritual dimensions of human experience. His early engagement with animals as symbolic subjects became a foundation for investigating survival, vulnerability, and the complex emotional narratives embedded in form. In his current Functional Contact series, Koo turns his attention to ordinary, mass-produced objects, elevating them into vehicles of psychological and symbolic inquiry. Through hyperrealistic depictions of items such as baby bottles and light bulbs, he is not merely replicating surfaces or textures, but uncovering what lies beneath: purpose, instinct, memory, ritual, and the deeply human impulses entwined with utility. Koo views these objects as extensions of human need—tools of nourishment, illumination, protection, and growth. By isolating them, magnifying their presence, and rendering them with meticulous precision, he invites viewers to re-encounter the everyday as something charged with meaning. His work is not still life for aesthetic contemplation alone, but a philosophical investigation into the fundamental nature of things we habitually ignore. When examined closely, these objects reveal emotional weight, symbolic resonance, and a quiet record of human survival and desire. Bon Koo’s practice illustrates how the ordinary, when deeply observed, becomes luminous—reflecting back the instincts that shape us and the poetry hidden in what we hold, use, and depend upon.