Still image from: BEYOND THE SCENE, YIYUN KANG 2020 projection mapping installation, cube room, mirrored floor, sound, 9;30", documentation camera Chunjin ParkJangho Kim, edited by Yiyun Kanghttps://www.yiyunkang.com/beyondthescene-bts — Still image from: BEYOND THE SCENE, YIYUN KANG 2020 projection mapping installation, cube room, mirrored floor, sound, 9;30", documentation camera Chunjin ParkJangho Kim, edited by Yiyun Kang
https://www.yiyunkang.com/beyondthescene-bts

OPENART Advisory x Photo London Fair Collaboration

OPENART is excited to announce a collaboration with Photo London Fair for a special edition of select photographers and digital artists from Korea for Photo London’s online publication, issue #33.

The Holiday issue includes works and biographies of six leading contemporary photographers and digital artists of Korea.

To read the full issue please click below:
https://photolondon.org/academy/magazine/
https://online.flippingbook.com/view/864735/

LIST OF ARTISTS:

Heeseung Chung
kdk
Myoung Ho Lee
Taeyoon Kim
Jung Lee
Yiyun Kang

For inquiries & media information:
info@openartadvisory.com

For additional inquiries:
Christine Lee
christine@openartadvisory.com
+917.224.0680

www.openartadvisory.com

Images courtesy of the artists.

Heeseung Chung

kdk (in lowercase)

kdk, Sf.D-2, 2005, C-print Mounted on Plexiglas wood frame, 150x120cm

MYOUNG HO LEE

Taeyoon Kim

Jung Lee

YIYUN KANG

Excerpt from Photo London Fair Magazine, Issue #33

Shifting Boundaries: Yiyun Kang

By Christine Lee of OPENART Advisory

Yiyun Kang is Korea’s leading digital artist known for her site-specific artworks based on projection mapping technology. Kang’s visual language intrigues and engages the audience with an immersive experience created through a perfected mix of audio, video, animation and projection mapping to create unique large-scale environments.

Initially trained as a painter, Kang utilises spatial projection mapping as she would a sculptural painting and as a means to create illusions on a surface. Her interest and employment of spatial digital mapping stems from her fascination with architecture and light, and an aptitude towards examining dichotomies. Her artistic practice explores the in-between’s of “real and virtual, surface and depth, absence and presence,” taking the viewers on a visual journey into a world of fabricated multi-media environments. Answering the question on “Why use mixed reality in art?” in Art+Technology Episode 23 ( https://www.yiyunkang.com/) by Bloomberg and Hyundai. Kang states that “we need to redefine our concept of realities. Projection mapping is a really strong instrument to talk about that shifting boundaries, it exists but at the same time disappears. I want to talk about our new perceptions, new orientations. How we can anchor ourselves in this shifting boundaries?”

In her latest work, Beyond the Scene (2020), Kang was among the artists selected to participate in CONNECT BTS ( https://www.connect-bts.com/seoul/BeyondtheScene/index.jsp), K-pop band’s global art initiative featuring works by 22 artists in London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Seoul, and New York under the direction of curator Daehyung Lee. The initiative includes a roster of renowned artists such as Antony Gormley, Tomás Saraceno, and Ann Veronica Janssens and curators like Hans Ulrich Obrist of Serpentine Gallery and Stephanie Rosenthal of Berlin’s Gropius Bau participating from around the world.

Kang’s large-scale installation for CONNECT BTS is an elaborate piece involving research and collaboration with choreographer Shin Chang-ho to recreate and capture BTS’ signature dance movements. In addition, she interviewed 15 BTS fans to portray the band’s international fan base, known as A.R.M.Y., an integral part of BTS’ identity. The resulting Beyond the Scene piece is a multi-sensory immersive experience that begins with moving images of what appears to be digitized landscape and topographic elevations which rapidly transform into small grids followed by shattering of white walls into a black nothingness. Dancers appear and disappear, and are seen and unseen, throughout this segment with their identities obscured by a white fabric overlaid on the surface of the walls as the audience experiences the dance movements through silhouettes, imprints and impressions.

https://www.yiyunkang.com/beyondthescene-bts

Lucid Dream (2019) is a projection mapping created for the Gwangju Design Biennale and installed in the tunnel which serves as the entrance to the Biennale. This work explores a future beyond the anthropocentric perspective, and the idea that “to develop an all-encompassing and inclusive future, what we urgently need to learn might be the mode of the lucid dreamer, who navigates between diverse dimensions so that we can transcend the limits of outmoded, dualistic thought and expand our creativity.” Kang brings up a critical question in this era of sophisticated algorithms and machine learning creations: “Can the existing humanity’s ideas, concepts and values can survive this new transformation?" This installation takes the viewers on a visual quest through otherworldly dreams with images and animations that flow in and out from one subject matter to another as Kang hopes to lead visitors to view our current and future lives as lucid dreamers.

https://www.yiyunkang.com/luciddream

In Continuum (2019), Kang looks into history, and how in today’s hyper-digital, monitored world driven by data and algorithms can influence how we perceive the past, present and future. She questions whether “the notion of history been reconfigured, altered or remained the same? (And) What would be the most significant quality that will still sit at the heart of our history?” In this work, she raises relevant questions on issues created by the ever-increasing presence of machines and softwares in our lives. Kang states: “It is incredibly easy to overlook how profoundly the world has changed over the last couple of decades with digital technologies. Kitchin and Dodge (2011) examined that our daily spaces are increasingly dependent on code, and thus computation creates new spatialities in our everyday life, turning the space into code/space. As such, computation is extensively and intimately woven into the fabric of our lives. Then have we really become ‘smarter’ than before with all these ‘smart’ aids of computer? With automation, data collection, pervasive computing, IoT technologies, we are actually losing our agencies ever than before and will increasingly lose it at the speed of light that runs through the fibre-optic cable if we would not recognize that our life is intensely shaped by the co-constitutive relationship between human, machine, and software.” This important work examines our knowledge of history and how computer technology is all around us, influencing our lives on a daily basis.

https://www.yiyunkang.com/continuum

Casting (2016), is a piece Kang created during her residency at the V&A museum in London. This installation is a captivating spatial projection mapping work that showcases her innovative practice utilising the latest technology. The piece floods the viewers’ senses, bringing new life into the V&A’s historic Cast Courts at the museum by combining the old and familiar with dynamic animation and movement.

https://www.yiyunkang.com/casting

Artist Bio

Yiyun Kang was born in Korea (1982), and currently lives and works in Seoul and London. She received her BFA from Seoul National University in 2006, then went on to gain an MFA in Design and Media Arts from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2017, she obtained a PhD from Royal College of Art in London where she is currently work as a Visiting Lecturer. She has exhibited widely in galleries and museums around the world, with notable commissions by Embassy of Republic of Korea and corporations including Max Mara. Her installations have been acquired by Victoria and Albert Museum and BigHit Entertainment on behalf of BTS. Kang’s writings have been published in the Leonardo Journal (MIT Press) and Practices of Projection (Oxford University Press). She participated in SIGGRAPH 2018 and NEXUS Pavilion, organized by La Biennale di Venezia.

Artist Q&A

1. Could you tell us about what inspires you as an artist today and how they relate to your work?

My inspirations are varied. It could be a book, academic paper, conversation, a piece of news, a walk at the museum, film, music video, watching something on the street...literally anything.

Inspiration is one starting point, collecting a glimpse of something much bigger. To draw a whole part from the little piece, the research part is more important than inspiration to generate my work. Through the research, I can contextualise my work, and the work grows from this contextualisation. With this conceptual underpinning, I can finally give form and shape to my concepts.

From inspiration, research to visualisation, from conception to completion, I employ different methods. They involve reading books and papers, interviewing people, asking for advice from engineers, studying software/hardware technologies. They are conceptual and technical, qualitative and quantitative, scientific and artistic, theoretical and practical simultaneously. To complete a project, I carefully keep the balance between these qualities. They are not conflicting but rather cohabiting elements in my work. I think my making process itself reflects my thoughts on 'shifting boundaries.'

2. In your recent project with ‘CONNECT, BTS’, K-pop’s global art initiative, your installation piece Beyond the Scene combines performance art, music and digital mapping to create an immersive experience. Could you tell us a bit about your inspiration and process involved in creating this installation, and how you brought these disciplines together?

At first, I wondered what caused BTS to become such a ground-breaking cultural phenomenon. Then, I realised that this success wasn’t built in a day. I figured that a symbiotic relationship exists between BTS and ARMY, a one-of-a-kind fandom. As part of my research, I interviewed fifteen London-based ARMY members of different ages, genders and ethnicities. Despite their differences, I could identify that their dedication is deeply rooted in the band’s philosophy, which embraces diversity. It was quite unique to see how the message collectively extends its influence in a rhizomatic way on a transnational scale. BTS and ARMY are growing together, completing each other. Not to mention BTS’ music and performance, this hyper-connected structure that generates positive energy lies at the heart of BTS’ singularity, and this is how they have metamorphosed from a K-Pop boy band to a global sensation. I decided to incorporate this unique entity, ARMY, in my work to capture BTS through the lens of art. All my conversations with ARMY members have become the pivotal element that enabled me to portray the aesthetic and philosophical qualities of BTS.

I found this phenomenon even more meaningful at this particular time and in this specific space, where the current political, financial, environmental, social and racial scenes have reached almost breaking point. We are living in a precarious era. We need to work together to go beyond the current scenes and become connected again, to make the world more inclusive and sustainable. It is thus inspirational to see how BTS moved beyond the subculture scene to the centre of the world, overcoming hardships. Reflecting this, I titled my work as Beyond the Scene.

I created an immersive audio-visual environment. Space is entirely wrapped by large-scale projections that capture the traces of human movements, inspired by BTS’ choreography. I’ve created the performance scene in collaboration with a choreographer, stage designer, lighting designer, camera director and contemporary dancers. These abstract, yet dynamic and intense movements fill space, just like how the seven boys built BTS together with the support of ARMY. These imageries are then mixed with digital animations, opening up an imaginative dimension as they expand beyond the external facade. This environment is bereft of boundaries. Viewers can navigate between the analog and digital, the physical and virtual and the material and immaterial as well as between surface and depth. This multi-sensorial space challenges your perception and emancipates your binary thinking by immersing your corporeality.