FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Entertainment

Taking Heavy Matters Lightly: Osang Gwon Sculpts With Photos

Multimedia artist Osang Gwon transforms the “heavy” tradition of sculpture into a “lightweight” innovation.

The long-practised tradition of three-dimensional sculpture has come a long way from its foundations in wood and stone, expanding to such a degree that it seems anything can fulfill its title, thanks in large part to the tradition of ‘found object’ and readymade works initiated by artists like Duchamp. Molding into ever more dynamic mediums, sculptures can be everything from the flamboyant large-scale Tupperware installations of Jeong Hwa Choi to the seminal light sculptures that United Visual Artists create for musicians like the Chemical Brothers. Sculptures now accommodate to all sorts of materials, even virtual ones based in code, transforming it into, surprisingly, the lightest of mediums.

Advertisement

Photographer and multi-media artist Osang Gwon shows us how he takes sculpture to a new scale of light. With his first solo show at Seoul’s Insa Art Space in 2001, Gwon debuted his brilliant marriage between photography and sculpture in “Deodorant Type.” Using ultra-light materials like Styrofoam for internal support, Gwon creates these large-scale sculptures by first photographing a live model, section by section, then printing and pasting hundreds of photographs to recreate the model. The results are almost as awkwardly life-like as the celebrity wax sculptures that many tourists still squander their holidays to see. In the case of Gwon's photo-sculptures, the visible layers and texture of the painstakingly pasted photographic paper justifies a different sort of triumph in pioneering this new art form.

A couple years after “Deodorant Type,” Gwon fancies an even lighter rendition of his photo-sculpture. By gathering and cutting out magazine advertisements of flashy accessories and luxury products, then attaching them to wire, he again pushes the limits of what can be considered to be sculpture through “The Flat” series. As a critique of the mass consumer culture he was born into as an artist of the Seo Taiji period, otherwise known as the second generation of baby boomers, the ostentatious display of brazen name-brand watches, jewelry, and excessive cosmetics bequeaths a smart simplification of sculpture by exploiting its weight capacity and treading the line between 2D and 3D. As the pioneer of photo-sculpture, Gwon brings the bling to sculpture without the heavy brunt of the bill.