Lot 1630: HONG SUNG DO

HONG SUNG DO
(B. 1953)
Tourist
signed in Korean; titled 'Tourist' in English; numbered '1/3'; dated '2009' (on the reverse)
plexiglass, aluminium and chromogenic print
90 x 130.5 cm. (35 3/8 x 51 3/8 in.)
edition 1/3
Executed in 2009

Seoul, Korea, Gallery IHN, Tourist, 4-18 November 2009 (different edition exhibited).

Employing a minimal technique that renders a formally precise and visually riveting aesthetic; Hong Sung Do warps an initially flat photograph into sculptural impersonations, securing the shapes on top of the larger pictorial plane to successfully maximize the visual and conceptual effects by loosening the link between picture and reality, between deconstruction and reconstruction.

In his recent Tourist series, his artistic root in sculpture proficiently benefits his empirical endeavor to elicit the three dimensional environment within the strictly two-dimensional medium of photography. Through bending deconstructed photographs to tangibly characterize the subjects, life is reconstructed into these static and tiredly reproduced images captured by a tourist's camera. Delicately imitating the soft cushioned patterns of the wall and the voluminous drama of the female protagonist, the raw glossy cut of the smaller photograph is adhered like a missing puzzle to the otherwise dimly protected setting. Hong assembles these puzzles by photographing in investigative frame to establish its role as a piece of visual evidence to solve the mystery of the societal conditions of human lives that may have been present prior to the documented empty public spaces. Clues of lingering aura of human inhabitance is preserved in subtly but adeptly concise arrangement; the cup holder awaits or perhaps is even forgotten to return to its original state tracing the anxiety of a passenger in Tourist (Lot 1714), and Tourist (Lot 1630), entails remnants of social interaction hinted by the glimpse of a human figure in the subway. With the absence of crowding tourists, the two public spaces that has once diligently provided accessibility and comfort has now found its banal beauty under Hong's spotlight and camera focus. Hong Sung Do's selected location serves deeper purpose than the obvious attempts in dissolving the boundaries between sculpture and photograph; criticism on the effects mass tourism and reproduction; but as a scrutiny on empiricism by exploring the synthetic relationship between image and experience.