Lot 1546: YOO HYUN MI

YOO HYUN MI
(B. 1964)
Composition No. 1
signed in Korean; signed, titled, dated, numbered and inscribed 'Yoo Hyun Mi; Composition no. 1; 2008; Ed B 1/3; Digital C-Print; 109 x 84 cm.; (Size B)' in English (on a label on the reverse)
chromogenic print
83.5 x 108 cm. (32 7/8 x 42 1/2 in.)
edition 1/3
Executed in 2008

In her ongoing investigation into the nature of "reality", Yoo Hyun Mi poetically composes her still life objects and captures them in every artistic procedure of sculpture, painting, finally settling it into photography. Her aspiration to bring her imagination and dream close to reality as possible is elegantly conveyed with a simple notion of taking a picture of her imagination. However, the procedure is less than simple as she attends to each step of development by first, molding daily objects from clay, elaborately painting them, and adding her own interpretation of the characteristics of light as well as shadows cast on different surfaces, creating a highly atmospheric setting.

Yoo challenges the viewer's perception on reality as she kindles a strange sense of emptiness where the objects become inaccessible to us, sealed by the constant reproduction of the preliminary value of the object. Nevertheless, this is precisely her conscious decision, one that starts deceptively truthful but only to realize the fallacy of her artwork as just an image projected from her dream, simultaneously stating that an artwork will always be a mere figment of imagination. As she overtones her works with comparable sensation of Surrealism in Composition No. 1 (lot 1546), she provokes a phantasmagoric ambiance with peculiar combination of blue and grey as the background wall, which shadows on to the warm yellow-brown of the floor. The silence of these muted colors pause these ordinary and arbitrary objects in perceptive lightness as the cool grey rock sits on top of the ladder and the other, delicately balanced on the tip of the chair, conjures a likeness to a planetary rock, adding to the extraterrestrial energy of the space. Her subtly humorous insertion of a gracefully poised tortoise emits a sense of pragmatic life to this mystic scene, which she quickly expands this glimpse of life into a more concrete existence by pertaining to Vilem Flusser's belief in the supremacy of photography in making images taken to be accepted as true and factual by the norm. Comprehending its potency, she has created an impression of reality through techniques that convince reality by physically molding her imagination in to sculpture, concluded by her exploitation of the power of photography to portray a false reality. Yoo intentionally undertakes calculated series of methods, as she desires for the audience to discover and analyze the space between reality and illusion, emphasizing the needed importance of marveling between reality and illusion and weighing its similarities and differences.