Unknown Pieces_ curated by Heo Daechan
As it is well known, artist Kwon Oh Sang’s art is ‘photography sculpture’ works. He uses isopink, a type of styrofoam, to create forms, and puts photos on them. Photos are the parts of real human be-ings or objects, or print-outs from internet resized to fit to the forms. Through such process, his rep-resentative two dimensional and three dimensional works have been inter-disciplined to each other. “Deodorant Type” is his key example.
Deodorant which is familiar to most of people by a number of advertisements and TV commercials that have clever and strong expressions is a product for reducing odor. This product temporarily covers up pores and prevents sweating by aluminum chlorohydrate as its major ingredient so that the bacteria that causes odor from sweating would be diminished. By adding scents to the product, the users can avoid the odor. This solution does not solve the fundamental problem, but it is only a trick or a convenient solution. However, this way somewhat solves the problem. The artist considers his artwork as such deodorant and in fact adapts the convenient way. Sculpture and photography both started from human desires that wished perfect representations of the reality. In the common sense, two dimensional photographs and three dimensional sculptures cannot be inter-disciplined, but the artist has succeeded it. The outcome is very close to the originals though; this outcome of the three dimensional sculpture whose surface is covered with photographs, the mechanical and chemical records of the reality, sounds easier to be closer to the originals, theoretically speaking. However, it only exists in theory; they are not closer than the original photographs and the sculptures representations. This artwork between being close and not being close has none of flatness of photographs or heaviness of sculptures, but has similarity to the reality. Also, through making the three dimensional and adding the two dimensional onto, the recognition about the conventional photography and sculpture gets renewed, and the stereotypes of light flat photographs and heavy solid sculptures in the art history get reborn.
The “Flat” series introduced since 2003 approaches differently to the conventional photography and sculpture. This series is finalized by the intense and clean Diasec; it is perfectly photography. Prod-uct images shown in various magazines such as watches, jewelries, cosmetics and perfumes, and automobiles, etc. have been cut off and laid out by standing them, and the photograph of this com-bined piece is the final outcome. However, as the artist considers standing photographs as a sculp-ture also, this outcome is the artist’s message about a new type of photography. By using the photos of the products that most well symbolize this modern society where too many products have been produced the artist uses the most simple and convenient way to express his opinion about today’s sculpture. In the “Sculpture” series, the materials of the three dimensional works have been extended from human beings to objects also so that the opportunity of thinking would be broadened along. By unclearly inter-disciplining so, the artist talks about today’s inter-disciplined art. Also, the artist suggests today’s people who live in between the virtual reality and the reality to review their lives in this media society.
‘Virtual exhibition’ formats have been added to this exhibition so that the artwork which cannot be easily put on shows can be exhibited such as the ones that already have been collected to private or organization collections, or the most recently finished works. Also, most of the exhibited artwork is recently created ones, the brand new ones for the audience. “MKZ” on the first floor displays the very his unique photography sculpture with his expressions about the American automobile brand Lincoln. For the “MKZ” project with Lincoln automobile series from 1930s, various automobile parts by Lincoln and collage of the brand mark images from the internet are combined into a three dimensional work. The artist’s three dimensional works such as “Huge Bust” (2013) which was in-troduced at Temenggong Artists-In-Residence in Singapore, or “Gilded Hair” (2013), “Halo” (2013) at Art Basel, and so on, and the two dimensional works from the “Flat” series such as “Lotus 3” (2012), “Flat 15” (2012), and so on will be displayed at the exhibition; it is my sincere wish that such various but not often shown works would become a chance for the audience for their better under-standing about art and about the artist.
