Lot 1644: ZU DO YANG

ZU DO YANG
(b. 1976)
Dohwa 2; & Ojuk
signed 'ZU DO YANG' in English (lower right of each work)
two fuji crystal archive prints
each: 125 x 122.5 cm. (49 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.)
edition 4/5; 2/5
Executed in 2007 & 2008 (2)

Seoul, Korea, Sungkok Museum, Nature + Suggest, 10 April-5 May, 2009

'Sway in the Space' in Photonet, Seoul, Korea, 2008 (illustrated, p. 13).
Doyosae, Mindful Garden, Seoul, Korea, 2008 (illustrated, pp. 102-103).
Koreahouse, Dreaming in Photography, Seoul, Korea, 2009 (illustrated, p. 264).

The play between flatness and fullness of Zu Do Yang's photographs forcefully impresses a sense of an intense gaze from either the viewer or the landscape. As Zu graphically manipulates the connection to reality by skewing the representational capacity of the photograph into abstract expression to consequently forge a surrealist production; what he endeavors is a visual parody of his concept and technique by simulating the compositional wide angles of a hemispherical photography to shrewdly rehearse the root of his curiosity, the eye, photography, and the source and amount of light that defines the image we see.

Applying the function of hemispherical photography to measure the solar radiation of plant canopies and to characterize the plant geometry, Zu also maps the atmospheric landscape in similar calculation, hence elevating the reality of his obtained images by mimicking the same globular shaping of nature and fortifying the sense of reality in its likeness to the scientific measurements of canopy photography. To stay true to the laws of nature, he impersonates the curvature of the earth with sweet pink blossoms sprinkled, enclosing the tree in introverted reflection in Dohwa 2 (Lot 1644); maintaining its illusory landscape in Ojuk (Lot 1644) but through an extroverted spurt, encircling its environment with countless growth of bamboo and crisp green leaves.

Adjacent to each other, Zu's photographs stem an appearance of a retina, dilated and contracted, in perhaps moreover as a conscious aesthetic will to figuratively utter that 'Human's sight with two eyes is different from optical projection. We see the world through the visual images made with lenses light incoming from a hole. This is one eye world.' Thus, under the mechanical conditions of these convex, rectilinear lenses, the images are extensive, fully subjugated again, by his yearn to highlight a reality transformed into representation, extended and replaced to emphasize that 'when we use digital pictures, the produced images are not fabricated. Images shown in work are parts we are not able to perceive and abstract parts. Consequently they are images based on reality of pictures. They are really not because it uses pictures but because they make spectators familiar with traditional picture images aware of unseen world to give them visual play with images unlike a real world.'