Through his series 'LOSING FACE,' artist Kim Dong-won visualizes the human beings into the beings which can be easily crumpled or torn by an external stimulation. The anonymous faces are crumpled, burnt up or torn.
The artist who has felt imperfect for the superficial images crumples them. The subjects on the crumpled paper remain perceivable visually. (Losing Face, 2008). So, the artist tears out the paper to take off the mask from the real beings. Only the simplified silhouettes of some gray shade appear inside the torn images.
The artist perceives that falsehood, feebleness and ephemerality of the visible beings are like the contemporary commodities being consumed, and thus, he proves the images of such imperfect beings.
He suggests not the proof about the beings simply visible but the proof about their life - contemporary life.
'Pretty Girl' the half of whose face is covered with the sun glasses is not discernible: boy or girl, young or old. Kim Dong-won calls this anonymous figure 'pretty girl,' and we receive all data recognizable from the title. As it is called, it is perceived although it cannot be identified.
'Pretty Girl' which has been reproduced in 'Collected Beauty' is collected and consumed in great quantities. Here, what is interesting is the fact that it is a person's shopping bag. If we observe the person's consumption pattern, he (or she) forgets what he (or she) has consumed and will consume. It is a contemporary image which can be derived from the imperfect image.
The images harbored by our contemporary people may be all same and all different simultaneously. The city is a place where we cannot know whether there is an existence or not.
Kim Dong-won's 'LOSING FACE' shows us another reality that exists due to the expanded boundary of reality. Not that it is recognized as existential but that it is more real and therefore that it reflects our human beings' existential look more.
The things I have believed in and I have thought as real. All those things visible to me have been reduced to the ashes or the proofs of the false images. As the fact is equated with the interpretation, having no real form, so is my view of the human beings. - From Artist's Note |
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