This is mostly because I left the studio "early" tonight so managed to get back to the hotel room for the far more reasonable time of twenty past midnight. Its practically the middle of the day, right?
Today we had a lecture from another Korean artist, Tae-Hoon Kim. This is one of the lectures that I was looking forward to from the outset as his lecture was listed as "Humor" and I tend to employ a degree of humour to provide a sort of buffer zone in my work.
The photos I saw in advance of Tae-Hoon's work made me think of some sort of figurines of anime characters but with a vaguely post-apocalyptic (for want of a better word of which I am sure there are dozens), however I was expecting his work to be far more jovial than it turned out to be. For example, when one of the first slides he showed us was a black and white photo of a pair of conjoined twins born in (and subsequently tested on) in the USSR, it was clear that all presumptions would have to be left at the door.
Tae-Hoon's work focuses on some pretty intense and deep thinking, the conjoined twins being only one example of this. He covered discussion about the conflict between the fetuses of twins and the struggle for life. These concepts then translate through to the visual language, and all of a sudden a cute looking piece of a character struggling to lift its own head because there is another head attached to it takes on an entirely new, slightly unsettling tone.
When asked about whether he used anime or cartoons as references he explained quite simply that visually he is far more inspired by David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and from now having seen his work "irl" so to speak, as well as seeing many more photos of it, I can believe this whole heartedly. One of the beautiful things about this body of work is that they clearly appeal to human nature. To most people they are probably not "creepy." However through my personal filter, which actively seeks out the strange and unusual, there is a distinct undertone.
But really, isn't that one of the things that great art is supposed to do, bring something out in us that already exists and extrapolate it to the front of our mind?
Either way, it is too late for such deep questions. As is becoming almost a tradition, I have been writing right up until going to bed. Its now 1:25am and I need to sign off!
I apologise for keeping all these entries relatively short, but if anyone is interested in me covering any of these artists in more detail when I'm not on such a tight deadline, let me know!
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