Bazbon: Imagery Rooted in the Internet, Hip-Hop, and Street Culture
"I actually remember writing 'character designer' as my dream job when I was in middle school," says Bazbon. Born in Seoul in 1988, this multidisciplinary artist now works across various mediums simultaneously, from painting, illustration, graffiti, and character design to art toys and brand collaborations. His work has been exhibited in Seoul, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and New York. He has also collaborated with Dynamicduo for the Off Duty album cover, as well as global brands like Nike, adidas, Samsung, Umbro, and MCM.
He spent his childhood absorbing the various animations broadcast on television and reading comic books page by page. His initial interest began with a habit of copying the characters he watched every day. Over time, he started weaving his own imagination into those drawn lines.
For Bazbon, the drive to keep creating is rooted in a very simple desire. He admits that his main motivation is the urge to become skilled enough at drawing so that he can truly enjoy every moment spent over the paper. This maturation process went hand-in-hand with his teenage years in the early 2000s, a period heavily defined by street culture, hip-hop, and the rapid expansion of the internet. Bazbon admits to being drawn to the rebellious imagery born out of subcultures, and his visual taste naturally leaned in that direction. "I also found things that were slightly unfinished or imperfect more attractive than things that were completely polished," he notes. That preference remains evident in his drawings today, which he describes as being composed of small fragments of the cultures and visual experiences he has absorbed and loved. Because his influences come from so many different directions, he is also accustomed to experimenting with various ways of processing imagery.
These visual preferences have carried over to this day, shaping his overall artistic identity. He admits he never consciously set out to create contemporary pop art. His current visual language grew organically from the things he has seen and enjoyed throughout his life. He views his work as an amalgamation of small pieces from various cultures and visual experiences he has absorbed over time. Influenced by many different fields, he experiments with various illustration styles to explore modern life and his personal tastes.
Bazbon's love for elements of imperfection is starkly evident in his approach to his creative process. In his day-to-day work, he uses digital tools to quickly lay out shapes and compositions. However, he realizes a certain sensation is lost if his work stops merely at pixels on a screen. When a digital image is translated into a physical medium, unexpected marks and accidental textures emerge. He emphasizes that this difference is crucial to his final pieces. "Rather than trying to perfectly reproduce a digital image, I think the small imperfections that come from working by hand make the final piece feel more alive," he explains.
The transition from a two-dimensional realm to physical form reaches its peak of satisfaction when he works on art toy projects. This is, in a way, the realization of his middle school dream when he wrote down "character designer" as his ideal profession. Seeing his drawings on paper transform into tangible, three-dimensional objects gives him a different kind of joy than just drawing. His role is to communicate the shapes he envisions as clearly as possible to the modeler. Sometimes they go through dozens or even hundreds of rounds of feedback to closely match the form in his head. Initially, he made toys simply because it was fun. Later, he realized there were people who genuinely enjoyed them. Having grown up playing with physical toys himself, the desire to create something tactile has always lived within him. He plans to continue making them if the right opportunities arise, closing his thoughts with an invitation: "Feel free to reach out!"
Bazbon's knack for translating pop culture into visual characters ultimately caught the attention of many global brands. His collaborations so far span musicians like Dynamicduo and multinational brands including Nike, adidas, Samsung, Umbro, MCM, BAPE, and Dr. Martens. Navigating the commercial demands of massive companies is often a challenge for artists, but Bazbon takes a collaborative approach. He believes that when a brand reaches out to him, they already understand the core characteristics of his work. Therefore, he never feels the need to set his personal style aside or strictly follow the brand's commercial directives. He always prioritizes discussion to find a shared balance. He genuinely enjoys the challenge of expressing his visual language within new environments and specific constraints. "And interestingly, the more commercial work I do, the more I realize how important my personal work is to me," he asserts.
Despite all his international exhibitions and collaborative projects, Bazbon still wrestles with technical challenges like any other artist. The most fundamental issue he frequently encounters is the frustration of not being able to draw exactly what he envisions. He feels that the ability to transfer an image from his head onto paper at his desired skill level is the most essential foundation. "The hardest thing, fundamentally, is when I can't draw what I really want to draw," he reveals. To overcome this, he has recently been focusing more on going back to the basics of visual arts.
The need to continually hone these foundational skills becomes especially relevant as he observes today's technological landscape, particularly with the rise of generative artificial intelligence. As someone who grew up during the internet boom, Bazbon views technological disruption with an open mind. He agrees that the advent of AI has made it harder for many artists to make a living and has left some illustrators feeling threatened.
Nevertheless, he also sees opportunities amid the situation. "If people become tired of seeing an overwhelming amount of AI-generated imagery everywhere, then showing them something great that can only be made by a person could actually become more valuable," he says. He believes that artificial intelligence can be a highly practical tool if used according to the artist's needs, while the true soul of an artwork will always rely on the human touch that created it.
