Vunkwan Tam employs a range of media, including sculpture, video, text, sound, and installation, to explore themes associated with death, decay, and the malaise of late-stage capitalism. Tam's artistic practice can be likened to found poetry or cento, in which he arranges groupings of pre-existing objects and linguistic fragments, often sourced from online platforms, to construct condensed spatial narratives. These fugitive arrangements, which are sensitive to their surroundings and often improvised, repurpose the decontextualized material of semiocapitalism in order to conduct an excavation of communal affect. Tam's work operates within the slippery realm of internet culture, which is characterised by a fusion of irony, hyperbole, and half-truths. A notable example of Tam's approach is his work 78i78 (2022), which features a bedraggled L-shaped blanket lying on the floor serving as a metaphor for the dramatised emotional wallowing often associated with contemporary culture. 

Seoul

Frieze

Hong Kong

Empty Gallery

Negative Space

Tempé Art Space

Tomorrow Maybe

Para Site

Vunkwan Tam

lest you-will-strike against-the-stone your-foot

Untitled (The traffic noise arched over a bubbling mass of public conversation and pattering footsteps on concrete)

Untitled (A billionaire unveils an electric truck styled after a 1996 polygon render)