Category Archives: BOOKS

CONTEMPORARY KOREAN PHOTOGRAPHY + ARCHISCULPTURE

ARCHISCULPTURE was featured in the book [CONTEMPORARY KOREAN PHOTOGRAPHY].

Article about the ARCHISCULPTURE & BEOMSIK WON from the book
[CONTEMPORARY KOREAN PHOTOGRAPHY]
by ILWOO Foundation and HATJE CANTZ

Beomsik WON takes photographs of urban buildings from different times and spaces, breaks them down into segments using digital techniques, and constructs collages to create familiar-looking, yet imaginary buildings. To make these “Archisculptures” as it is called, he carefully combines the segments taking into consideration the architectural size, space, and formative elements; he then places them against simple backgrounds, and lastly adds people or birds for the viewers to guess the size of the building. Although these strange buildings are products of the artist’s imagination, they show various styles of architectures throughout history.

In the Archisculpture series, WON collaged the images of politically or socially important buildings in order to present a new interpretation of a city that operates like an enormous organism. He shows not only the history of the city but also the history of its people by revealing the surface of buildings that have been damaged due to natural weathering or historical incidents and then subsequently repaired. The Archisculpture, essentially a collage of history and people, is how the artist collects, classifies, and preserves the collective memory.

Beomsik WON studied metalwork and jewelry at Kookmin University (B.F.A., 1998), photography at Hongik University (M.F.A., 2008), and fine art media at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL University (M.F.A., 2012). He has been awarded The AOP Student Award (The Association of Photographers, 2012), the Gallery Lux Emerging Artists Award (Gallery Lux, 2013), the American Aperture Award (AX3, 2013), and the ILWOO Photography Prize (ILWOO Foundation, 2013).

The brochure and photos of the Vestfossen 2016 main exhibition

vestfossens2

WON, Beomsik’s ARCHISCULPTURE PROJECT features imaginary structures consisting of fragments of many different buildings brought together to form one integral architectural sculpture. The project could almost be seen to fit with the view of the city as ‘phantasmagoria’, as envisaged by Walter Benjamin’s Flâneur figure. The aesthetic and historical aspect of each building is taken apart and pieced back together with foreign elements, creating a fusion of style and identity that also reflects on today’s urban profile. As well as conforming to the aesthetic requirements of an artwork, the dismantling and collage of cityscapes gives new meaning to our notion of space, time and identity.

WON, Beomsik’s images serve as a sociopolitical documentation of urban changes that characterize the big cities of today’s fast-evolving world. Together they form a spatial autobiography dealing with questions of places, images and meanings. The city is constantly changing and what is there today may no longer be tomorrow. The possibility of its ephemeral existence may confer on a place historical importance and emotional value. Spatial history is then not only a record of these changes but also the subjective interpretation of the physical space in accordance with emotions and experiences we associate with particular places of our memory.

11_BUSANPORT_Ansten_Vestfossen2016i
the photos of the exhibition by Nina Ansten, thanks.

VESTFOSSEN Kunstlaboratorium

ARCHISCULPTURE + gestalten

Causing surprise at first, but making perfect sense upon deeper thought. Beomsik Won’s gravity-defying collages have their origins in Lego, the plastic interlocking toy building blocks. The Korean artist would often play with them as a child, and the act of assembling structures and disassembling them to then create different ones struck a chord with him that later evolved into the act of making these digital photo-sculptural architectural compositions. Won cites Walter Benjamin’s ideas on phantasmagoria as well as the cultures of the East and the West as recurrent themes in his work. The impossible structural scenarios he imagines fuse urban fragments together from varying time periods, geographical locations, and architectural styles.

by gestalten