Statement - Hong Jang Oh

 

Through sculpture and installation, various aspects that can arise from tensions such as difference and homogeneity, overlap and exclusion, conflict and negotiation inherent in the boundaries of materials are shown. In particular, I am interested in how technology reflects the current physical reality itself by expressing a world of new possibilities that transcend the conflicting boundaries between nature and artificiality.

 

It shows imaginary substitutes recombined by dismantling, overlapping, and transforming specific structures that can be found in living and non-living, artificial and mechanical forms. Its unknown form is clearly distinct from metaphorical symbols or anthropomorphic machines that imitate nature, and can be said to be a biological model synthesized at the borderline where reality and virtuality meet. It may be a cell, an animal, a plant, or a fragment of mineral matter, or sound and light, or it may be an aggregate that forms a colony from a single entity.

 

The process of creating a new object is always non-linear and unplanned, and the contingency of the visual and physical responses of each part is activated as much as possible. The goal is to choose a method that can reveal the properties of the non-art materials used, such as aluminum, transparent or translucent PVC panels, reflective cloth, wire and beads, that is, their cold or dry, light or heavy conditions. The resulting uncertainty remains in the final result of the work.

 

A different world unfolds through the negotiation between the structure's inevitable fate of gravity and the various X and Y axes that disturb it. The various conditions of possibility faced by materials, such as irregular arrangement, elaborate symmetry, and natural stretching due to gravity and its reversal, become the materials and driving force of the work. Clues to life and death are found in the subtle echoes of space and material. Ultimately, the goal is to capture and record the moments of friction that are created at the boundaries of relationships where the conditions of existence collide.