SeeSaw

While I was attending a wedding, I happened to notice that the giant flower arrangement was a combination of artificial flowers with only a few real ones. In the end, it doesn’t matter if    the flowers are artificial or real as long as they convey a congratulatory message. Replicas of real objects are so deeply embedded in our lives, replacing real-life objects for the sake of saving money or convenience, that we aren’t even aware of it. As I enjoyed my coffee at a cafe, I noticed how beautiful the flowers on the window sill were. Although I wasn’t close enough to be certain if the flowers were artificial or natural, it didn’t affect my appreciation of the visual beauty of the flowers. This is why I began to shoot still-life photography by combining replicas and real-world objects.

I started to experiment with the printed photos I had taken of real objects and their replicas in a playful way. For some works, I printed two of the exact same photos, and cut one of them vertically and the other horizontally.

Then I reconstructed the cut-up image strips like weave, the weft woven into the warp forming the new image like a tapestry. The image of the photos is formed carefully together like an interlocked jigsaw puzzle that is visually familiar and yet distinct.

When we see or saw objects, what do we perceive? Visual habits and the familiarity of images hampers our ability to comprehend objects with depth. It is my hope that the audience could absorb the depth of my work through the combining of real objects and replicas, burnt objects and deconstructed and recombined images, to bewilder the audience in their perception of the objects and to force them to question the visual imagery of the photographic work in front of them.

YOON Giljung