[MyDaily = Kang Da-yun] What once was a running joke about Kian84 being a “100 million KRW” artist has, years later, surfaced as a real listing on a resale platform.
Posts on several online communities spread reports that an original painting by the webtoon artist and TV personality Kian84 — titled Starry Cheongdam — was listed on the secondhand marketplace Danggeun Market.
The seller wrote that the piece was being sold because of a move, adding that its imagery is unusually distinctive and the oil texture feels different from his other works. “Please only make offers if you’re genuinely interested,” the listing read. The asking price was set at 150,000,000 KRW (approximately 112,500 USD). The post drew substantial attention and prompted direct messages, but the listing has since been removed. It is not clear whether a sale was completed.
Starry Cheongdam drew extra interest because Kian84 had shown the work on television. The painting appeared on MBC’s I Live Alone in April 2022. When comedian Park Na-rae saw it, she marveled, “To me, you’re Korea’s Andy Warhol.”
Starry Cheongdam was also included in Kian84’s first solo exhibition, Full Ownership, which ran from March 26 to April 5 that year. On his YouTube channel Life84, he acted as a docent and identified “desire” as the exhibition’s central theme.
Kian84 explained that he had been thinking about what people want most. Watching people laugh and cry and work their whole lives — even taking on loans — he said, “To me, real estate seems to dominate people’s lives. So I made a real-estate-themed work the centerpiece.”
Describing Starry Cheongdam, he said that when he runs along the Han River he passes the Cheongdam Jaiga. “To me, it looks cool — like a treasure. Not the kind of treasure you read about in social studies books; these days, people seem to treat riverside apartments as treasures,” he said.
Kian84 completed Starry Cheongdam as a riff on Van Gogh’s Starry Night. He also created a series of similar works, including Starry Apgujeong, Starry Seongsu and Starry Jamsil.
The artist made headlines when he donated the full proceeds from his first solo show — 87,000,000 KRW (approximately 65,250 USD). At the time, individual works at the exhibition were reported to have sold for around 20,000,000–25,000,000 KRW (approximately 15,000–18,750 USD). The recent 150,000,000 KRW (approximately 112,500 USD) listing has revived earlier remarks.
In May of that year, on the YouTube channel M Dromeda Studio, Kian84 mentioned that his solo show had sold out while talking with Joo Ho-min and Lee Mal-nyeon. When Lee joked, “Wasn’t each painting around 100 million won?” Kian84 replied, “If it had been 100 million, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
What started as a tossed-off “100 million” joke resurfaced years later as a 150,000,000 KRW (approximately 112,500 USD) listing. Because the painting was showcased on television and because proceeds from the exhibition were donated, the piece has attracted more attention than a typical resale. Observers say the listing evokes both the entertainer and the artist sides of Kian84.
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