prosthetic knowledge

Nam June Paik’s 80th Anniversary : Nostalgia is an Extended Feedback

Poster for an event at the Nam June Paik Art Centre on the 20th July 2012, the date that would be his 80th birthday:

For Paik, ‘nostalgia’ was not a mere yearning for the past. It was rather a practical act of ruminating on his dreams and passions for the future that had been impossible to realize in the past. Similarly, the exhibition wishes to go beyond a conventional retrospective of the artist. Unfolding ‘the future of the past’ that Paik envisioned, we hope this exhibition will become a convivial feast of science, technology, philosophy, arts and culture all together.
Paik tried to incorporate the potential values of cybernetics, robotics and informatics for humans into art. His unusual view of the world was not that man and nature would devastate each other due to scientific technology, but that man, machine, and nature would be able to come together. We believe that all contemporary artists participating in this exhibition would also have a sense of community with a strong nostalgia for this world view of Paik’s.

More Here

Qubict Parallax Viewpoint by Kim Yong-Kwan 

Black & white Op-Art isometric paintings / physical installations featuring diagonal-line spaces and objects:

PARALLAX VIEWPORT ● Two images viewed by a spectator from two different perspectives of an object are called parallax. Parallax is shown in diverse realm, such as objects, incidents, notion, and is two different faces of the same phenomenon while not containing each face as a hexahedron. Each viewpoint cannot coexist and is concluded as one face of a thrown dice (a regular hexahedron). However, the problem is that the chosen viewpoint is not inevitable. If a certain decision were made on the crossroads of decisions, that following realm would be alive. I look for another unrevealed perspective in a physical-historical-conceptual realm and reconstruct it in a parallel way. ● Qubict is a compound word of “qubit,” which is an arithmetic unit of a quantum computer with parallel operations, and “cubic,” which implies a regular hexahedron. It is a particle of antinomy concurrently possessing the properties of a 2-dimensional and a 3-dimensional. A dice is an object that shows a parallax and eventually is concluded as one face when thrown. The 3-dimensional works of Qubict show diverse possibilities and images before it is decided as one plane, and it has 6 different images of up, down, right, left, front, and back. The 2-dimensional works of Qubict-Parallax Viewport are able to capture three faces of a hexahedron simultaneously since they convey a shape of a regular hexahedron from an isometric projection drawing. In addition, the distance is not applicable to them and their characters of not having any shadow create an illusion that cannot be reproduced as a 3-dimensional.

More here, here, and here

(PS - the bottom image is part of an installation, as crazy as it looks)

Sigma Complex by Ryu SungHun

Collection of paintings currently shown at the Absinthe Gallery, Seoul, utilizing various layers, styles, and references at once.

More Here [Korean]

Queen Elizabeth II - Reflection by Changwon Lee (2007)

Image reproduction that is actually produced from reflected light on a plain surface, based on tight vertically arranged shelves of image strips.

Photorealistic Paintings of Jihye Park

Artist paints scenes of women in mid-moment. Description from the Albemarle Gallery:

Park Jihye is a meticulous painter who concerns herself primarily with depictions of women. These women are often caught from behind, mid-movement. The lifelike qualities of her paintings interfere with a moment in time and she is able, through the interactions of movement, to engage the viewer into a time sequence. Without tension or preoccupation, her characters become familiar to the viewer and her paintings deny passive observation and encourage total absorption within the moment. 

Other works (not featured above) can be found at the Albemarle gallery here

강희영

Artist paints study spaces filled with messy desks, computers, book shelves, compositions which are painted on mirrors as opposed to canvas.

Currently showing in a group show at the Samcheong gallery, South Korea.

Glitch Inspired Paintings by South Korean Artist Woopsyang (웁쓰양)

DMZ Garden 

The Chelsea Flower Show, a high-profile event in the UK for gardening enthusiasts, has installed a De-Militarized Zone garden, complete with wooden watchtower, barbed wire and spent ammo shells:

Created to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean conflict, this garden makes use of the vast treasure trove of indigenous plants that have thrived in the almost pristine conditions in the sanctuary of the demilitarised zone (DMZ). The design highlights the tensions and lasting effects of the conflict.

The barbed wire fence surrounding the garden creates a feeling of mystery and unease. Carefully considered installations feature the remains of warfare, including defensive walls, trenches and charred trees. The fence is hung with cans and bottles containing letters from separated families and friends to illustrate the sense of longing felt by people kept apart by the conflict.

The watch tower reminds visitors of the surveillance of the DMZ and also provides an observation point for the garden. A memorial chair commemorates war veterans and victims. A stream flows through the garden, defying the barriers of human conflict and depicting the feelings of love and tension that the designer believes co-exist in the DMZ.

More info can be found at the Chelsea Flower Show site, as well as London Korean Links

The Artwork Of Kang Young-Min 

Description of the artist from The University Of Texas from 2004:

Young-Min Kang, who graduated in May 2004 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art, was awarded the 2004 Roy Crane Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in the Visual Arts. Young-Min’s works start out as large photographic images which are then digitalized and sliced into long ribbons or tubes, and then painstakingly reconstructed into complex and compelling three-dimensional structures.

20th Century Fox by Young-Min Kang

Look at Window 

Painting series by Korean artist Soon-young Yang. 

Angel Soldier by LEE Yong-Baek

Video performance featuring soldiers in floral camouflage. From National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea:

Angel soldier is a video performance in which, through the drastic contrast between angel and soldier, without any logical proceedings and explanation whatsoever, directly and frankly expresses the social conditions of our generation. Perceptional and emotional values in an artwork are entirely different from those of an academic study in that an artwork is free from logical proceedings. The strength of directness is like a poem. If a movie is like a novel, than an artwork is like a poem. Lee Yongbaek is an artist who is able to capture this advantage and strenth an artwork. 

Image credits from designboom and KIAF

Friends by Yoon Gi Won (윤가현)

Series of large-scale, bold, colourful portraits of the artist’s friends and heroes.