The world of Fernando Botero is a little fatter than everyone else's. The world-famous Colombian figurine painter and sculptor is known for exaggerating the fleshly proportions of the human form, while still capturing mundane moments of everyday life. The effect is an unsettling and often comical blending of the fantastic and the ordinary.

However, even Botero's ordinariness is that of Colombia and its violent history in particular. So it may be a scene of a man and his dog, a family out on a picnic, or drug lord Pablo Escobar shot to death on a rooftop, or a ravenous petty dictator at work. Put oddly cherubic chubby faces on all of those, and you are getting the picture of the work of Fernando Botero.

Fernando Botero poses in front of his work "Rubens and His Wife" (2005) at the National Museum of Contemporary Art on Monday.

An exhibition of Botero's work opens at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul on June 30, running through Sept. 17.

Perhaps only Rubens has celebrated ampler flesh in a similar way. Botero himself enjoys the work of Rubens. But love-handled figurines of primitive fertility goddesses also come to mind, and surely there is some influence on Botero there too. The artist always says his preference for the rotund is purely a matter of artistic intuition. He has been portraying humans that way since about 1964 and says he does not know exactly why, just that it feels right.

Botero has said, "Art is deformation." If so, he is currently one of the most famous deformers in the world. Besides work that specifically relates to Columbia and its social history, he is also known for reinterpreting the works of famous past masters in comically plumper style. In his reinterpretation of the Mona Lisa, the mysterious apocalyptic background is almost blotted out by the blockish width of Mona Lisa’s head and cheeks that look pumped up with ice cream consumption. Figures from Goya, Bonnard, Durer, David and Velazquez get similar treatment.

Perhaps Botero is just joking with his Fat Mona. But his own curious compositions achieve a story-telling blend of ordinary and fantastic, regional and universal, sacred and profane.

◆ Venue: National Museum of Contemporary Art in Deoksu Palace
◆ Date: Jun. 30, 2009 - Sep. 17, 2009
◆ Tel.: (02) 368-1414