Neither painting, nor photo

Yoo Hyun-mi's "Cosmos in Studio" (2013) / Courtesy of the artist

This is the 17th in a series of interviews with notable artists recommended by the Korean Artist Project, an online platform promoting Korean art. ― ED.

By Kwon Mee-yoo

Artist Yoo Hyun-mi's work blurs the boundaries among photography, painting, sculpture and video. She converts physical space, objects and even human beings into pieces of painting, questioning the separation between reality and fantasy.

One of her major works, "Bleeding Blue" (2009), was a crowd-pleaser at the "Illusion and Fantasy" exhibit at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, earlier this year. Unlike most videos installed in a partitioned, dark room, the video was screened in a passageway of the exhibition hall, attracting passers-by to see how a man becomes a painting. They also observes Yoo's photographic work up close, speculating whether it is a painting or photography.

The short film's Korean title is directly translated into "A man who became a painting." As the title literally explains, Yoo's work is about a man who is turned into a painting by his new artist neighbor.

"5" (2014)

"When people see a good photo, they say it is like a picture. They always covet what they don't have. So I thought, if I combine their merits, would the result be complete?" the artist said during an interview with The Korea Times at a cafe near her studio in southern Seoul.

"This is about art and what people expect from art and artists. It begins with an ordinary person living in an ordinary house. An artist moves into the house next door and the artist turns the person into an artwork," Yoo explained.

"However, the man-turned-painting has a look of expectation, while being afraid of the artist. This is how people usually treat artists in Korea. Most people are scared of artists, but they also hope the artists can help them get away from their boring routine. The work points out the prejudice and anticipation toward artists."

The film also works as a commentary on Yoo's working process, painting the scenery and objects and taking pictures of them.

"Broken Mirror No.5" in "Cosmos" series (2013)

"People often wonder how I make these painting-like photos and this video shows the process of painting and taking pictures, making it clearer to understand," Yoo said.

The piece is a visual representation of Yoo's novella, in that she steadily writes stories and poems. "Many of my ideas come from my writings. It could be an image, a poem or a novel. I first make a sculptural installation, color them to look like a flat painting and take pictures of the scene," she said.

Instead of digitally manipulating the photos to look like a painting, Yoo works in an analogue way. She repaints the backdrop, moves around the objects and retouches light and shade to make it as real as a painting and shoots pictures again and again. "It would take at least 100 photo shoots to get the results I want.

After the success of "Bleeding Blue," Yoo produced "The Museum" series, in which she transformed various people into portraits, crossing the borderline between reality and unreality.

"Bleeding in Blue — Drawer" (2009)

Shin Sue-jin, photography psychologist and creative director of Ilwoo Foundation, said Yoo's work creates imaginary scenes with recombined fragments of reality as they occur in dreams and stories.

"The ideas taking shape in Yoo's work are conceived from tales, dreams, others' experience or literature. These stories share the quality of reflecting unrealistic wishes and desires. Yoo seeks to invent an unrestricted alternative reality with a large ever-attentive ear, an animal horn, a symbol of eternity attached to a chair made of dead trunks, or settings representing femininity and sexual desire. These ideas, recreated as her work, are not simply wild acts of imagination ― they question a blurred sense of reality, as well as offering consolation," Shin wrote in the preface of Yoo's book "Cosmos," published by Hatje Cantz in Germany.

Y"Bleeding in Blue — A Man" (2009)

Reality becomes unreality

Her work is unreal, rather than being surreal, and transcends conventional divisions of two-, three- or four-dimensionality. Such characteristics come from Yoo's varied interests.

Born in 1964 in Seoul, Yoo majored sculpture at Seoul National University and studied studio art at New York University, but she always had a strong sense of curiosity, covering a wide variety of interests.

"Though I majored in sculpture, I took all kinds of art classes from print to photography. In the graduate school, I mainly studied photography but also learned video, ceramics, glass art and many more. I didn't know what to do and all of those seemed so interesting to me," Yoo said.

As most of her work is on the peculiar side, she is often asked "why" she does such things. "But I have a very simple answer to that question ― Why not?," the artist said. "There is no constraint on thought when I think of a new piece. People often say that I blur the boundaries of something, but I can step on the lines because I purposefully ignore them."

She believes that writing is the foundation for my art. Her book "Tree Walk," published in 2012, is about a tree that doubts one's fate of staying in one place and travels the world enduring the hardship of pulling out the roots.

"I don't want to be a writer and am inadequate for becoming one, but it is important to me. I write poems, children's stories and scripts for short films and writing consistently is spiritual nourishment," Yoo said.

As a visual artist, Yoo constantly asks the question of what people want to see in this era with its flood of images.

"Modern people are exposed to thousands of images everyday through the Internet and television and the images are short-lived. I fret about the situation, wondering what I can do as an artist," Yoo said.

For more information, visit www.koreanartistproject.com.