Ryu Han-Seung
Art Critique
The first thing you will notice from the work of Ji Yong-Ho are the ‘tires’. The tires surrounding the three dimensional pieces are relatively strange and rare in art. He accordingly combines various types of tires to create accurate forms of animals. In other words, he used tires to create sculptures. Of course, such creations require a perfect understanding of the medium and must also have the certain techniques required to handle the medium. But, that does not mean that his objective lies in tires. Tires are a medium that will translate what he means to express most sufficiently.
His works begin with ‘mutant’. It means a mutated being or to be changed. Ji Yong-Ho is especially interested in artificial mutation. The dictionary’s definition of the word is an animal, plant or cell that is physically different from others of the same species because of a change in its genes. That is to say that the DNA structure or genes are altered. Mutation may occur during the natural cell division process but can also occur through chemical or radiation influences. An interesting fact is that mutations rarely influence living creatures in positive ways. Therefore, mutated creatures usually do not adapt to the environment and they hardly reproduce. His works seem terrorizing and strong but the truth is that they are fragile and unstable. He uses acryl gems for the animals’ eyes. These eyes seem sad and desolate as if they are allusions of their fate.
Generally speaking, people perceive mutants as abnormal and inferior creatures. If mutants obtain abilities superior to the originals and if they become more valuable, how would people perceive these creatures? Probably they would recognize these animals as ‘normal’ beings and would treat the originals as ‘abnormal’ beings. The line separating normal from abnormal is quite vague and the line is frequently re-drawn with changes in society and time.
Works of Ji Yong-Ho mutating animals can largely be separated into two different forms according to the extent of the mutation. At one part, there is an animal and the animal is mutated. Thus the mutant resembles the original animal. It’s just that animal seems somewhat alien because its pose is aggressive and intimidating. The other part of his project involves an animal being fused with other animals. He used a vivid imagination here but his imagination does not spoil the original intention, which is the mutation. And because he means to preserve the original intention, he is required to be more vigilant.
As you can see, Ji Yong-Ho does not care too much about the tire medium but cares mostly about where the line separating normal from abnormal is. He used tires to indicate the mutation more effectively and the medium might as well be replaced with stones, woods or bronze. Tires are soft but can be rigid and tough at the same time and they have certain characteristics of tires. The medium is handy for expressing mutated animals and also useful for articulating the muscles of such animals.
Sculpture is an art of 3 dimensions. Sculpture is 3D and the materials used to construct it are also 3D. The materials for sculpture should be selected carefully for it is the core element of sculpture production. Sculptures often involve themes of power and interaction between powers of life. That is why the skeletal structures of bodies are important and muscles moving the structure are vital. For this reason, anatomy must be understood thoroughly.
Ji Yong-Ho, an artist who majored in sculpture art, focuses on mutated animals. To be precise, such animals don’t exist in the world. But based on thorough research of the anatomy of animals, he creates animals that may exist in this world. The creations are on the verge of becoming the reality.
He is exhibiting , and < Ox head5> in this show. It may seem few but you can see that different techniques and types of tires that are used in each piece.
The first is , the king of beasts. He used stainless steel structures in order to express the dynamic features of four-legged animals, such as a lions, jaguars and wolves. He welded the frames first and added tires onto the frames. But he did not randomly produce the frame. He cast the animals first and completed the structure based on the cast. Stainless steel structures are useful for emphasizing the irregularity of forms. He used the tough tires of tractors, mountain motorcycles and car tires to create beasts. But the limbs of the lion are elaborated with shredded motorcycle tires and the fur is represented with turned out tires. He did not paint the beasts in order to make them appear rough.
The second is , which represents marine creatures. In order to conserve the swift and dexterous flow of fish forms, he used FRP molding techniques extensively. He first produced a fish form with clay and cast it with FRP and fixed tires on the FRP with screws. FRP casting would produce lumpy and flowing forms m