Gwon Osang’s solo exhibition presents the artist’s practice, which has opened up new possibilities for contemporary Korean sculpture through the combination of volume—a classical attribute of sculpture—and photography, a contemporary medium. The exhibition focuses on the conceptual evolution of ‘Deodorant Type,’ the series that lies at the core of Gwon’s distinctive practice of photo-sculpture, while tracing the trajectory of his work as it has developed through an ongoing dialogue with major figures in the history of modern sculpture.

Whereas sculpture was traditionally conceived as a process of carving away from or adding to substantial material in order to achieve solid mass, Gwon’s ‘Deodorant Type’ marks a shift in medium by hollowing out that solid mass and constructing a thin surface grounded in visuality. In place of the inherent weight of material, he brings the lightweight illusion of the image to the forefront of sculpture, continually revealing moments in which the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional converge and come apart within three-dimensional space.
 
While ‘Deodorant Type’ has expanded the territory of contemporary sculpture and raised ontological questions by joining fragments of two-dimensional photographs within three-dimensional structures, Gwon’s recent works move toward a deeper consideration of the meaning of sculpture, grounded in the traditions of art history.

Through his ‘Reclining Figure’ series, Gwon reinterprets the sculptural vocabulary explored by the twentieth-century modernist sculptor Henry Moore—the organic curves and masses of the reclining human body, as well as the voids that connect inside and outside. These elements are transformed into assemblages of fragmented contemporary images that dissolve the boundaries between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, and between figuration and abstraction.
 
From a distance, viewers recognize the monumental form of a reclining figure; as they move closer, however, the human form recedes, leaving them confronted by an overwhelming abundance of visual information. The irregular and seemingly random images covering the surfaces of the reclining sculptures strip their subjects of their original contexts, while the voids deliberately opened between their masses draw attention to the sculpture’s interior and exterior and establish an organic relationship with the surrounding environment. Through Gwon Osang’s ‘Reclining Figure,’ viewers experience a recurring tension between visual disassembly and reassembly unfolding throughout the surrounding space.

Centered on the ‘Reclining Figure’ series, which reconfigures Henry Moore’s classical imagery through a contemporary sensibility, the exhibition reveals expanded possibilities for sculpture as it moves dynamically between materiality and illusion. By walking among the sculptures in the exhibition space, viewers are invited to encounter in depth the distinctive artistic trajectory through which Gwon Osang has broadened the horizons of contemporary Korean sculpture.

References

• SHINSEGAE GALLERY, DAEGU