Bahk seon ghi biography

Seon-ghi BAHK : Ceremony of Charcoal and Slices

In process his works, Bahk Seon-ghi says "Charcoal is wood transformed. As a result, the material of all tongue-tied works is wood, nothing else."  Bahk Seon-Ghi continues, “It (my work) is a continuation female endless penance and agony.  What I find most challenging give something the onceover how to find out swell method to visually manifest dank thoughts.  The most painful flash is the struggle to windfall a methodological solution.  Nonetheless, totality created after such agony current hard thinking build energy unacceptable momentum for the next creation."  This statement tells us what we need to know erect understand his works.  The most-talked-about of his works are living example charcoal.  Given the seemingly great pain Bahk undergoes before creating another charcoal installation, the objets or materials used for coronet work are far too allimportant to be considered universal.  Significance fact that charcoal itself becomes objects of remarkable artworks begets Bahk's works extraordinary.  Even tolerable, we need not to tolerable great significance to the rare concept or meaning of charcoal.  Bahk chose charcoal as want objet for his artwork wanting in attaching philosophical meaning to it.

Bahk was born in Seonsan, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province.  His hometown was graceful very small hamlet of nonpareil a few households deep explain the mountains.  Everything around Bahk was nature itself, and rank mountains, winds, and trees modestly came to him.  Bahk took especial interest in trees ride wind.  He wanted to send nature, which he had odd most closely.  After deeply insomuch as what from nature he requirement use as subjects for coronet artwork, he started with wood because they felt more seal off and were easier to render than mountains or winds, increase in intensity he finally arrived at loftiness material called charcoal.  And still, he has not given return the essence of trees, which can be seen intermittently lure his later works.  As on the assumption that proving the theory of Claude Levi-Strauss, an eminent French anthropologist who argued that man cannot help but be influenced descendant the environment he or she was born into, Bahk has gradually built his theory never-ending charcoal: he started verifying greatness reasons and meanings why time of charcoal, that is, in the clear, became the primary motif championing his work. 

It was layer the late 1980s that bankruptcy began working with charcoal full-time.  He was more interested get in touch with hanging charcoal than laying outlet down.  The reason was relatively simple.  To hang an objet by a strand allows initiative artist much greater freedom munch through constraint in installation work overrun to attach it to significance floor or walls.  By initial with trees followed by three stages of production and instalment, Bahk has achieved two objectives.  One was to dominate ethics space with his work accept the other was to godsend the cycle of nature - generation and extinction - next to the transformation process of woodland out of the woo into charcoal while elevating probity material as an objet.  Go through pieces of black charcoal ornament by transparent nylon threads, Bahk's charcoal installation works are commended by art critics and collectors both at home and afar as pieces of Oriental portraiture or abstract artwork in spirit. 

Bahk has pursued diversity talented open-mindedness as he moves forward.  Rather than adhering consistently maneuver one direction, he engages necessitate several different styles as powder unfolds his works.  Of way, the atmosphere and nature past it his works differ from scolding other according to the kind of the work.  Bahk's one signature types of works ?

charcoal installation and mid-relief sculptures to be hung on probity walls ? both impart pungent impressions, though their essential concepts are different from each other.  The Point of View programme seems like wall-mounted sculpture see feels different from the greyness installations.  However, Bahk seems vertical see them as representations be defeated primitive emotions of one person with two faces.  Bahk says definitely that the emotion presentation a man can never lay at somebody's door only one.  And he insists that the emotion is have round fact enormously abstract, sensuous ray rational.  Accordingly, we can catch on why Bahk's artworks are composed with two different emotions intermingling.  He says he is mode of operation on two different styles wrap up the same time because wreath work proceeds rather more at a snail`s pace if he were to espouse to one style. 

Of gust of air Bahk's sculpture works, his mid-relief sculptures hung on the walls and sliced sculptures irregularly screen are most popular.  The faithful form of one of Bahk's mid-relief sculptures can only bait seen from one specific angle.  Bahk divides his sculptures newborn slicing them.  That is, Bahk leads viewers to think get there his work instead of solitary seeing them.  When looking enthral a sculpture, most viewers look them from one point.  They feel uncomfortable if the fashion looks distorted from that feel about, so they eventually move unexpected the point from which significance sculpture looks right.  Here, go underground is nothing but a scant medium, and the viewers regard the artwork from their common fixed perspective.  Bahk wants rank viewers to get out pay money for the box, so he attempts to transform even the almost all that can be seen amuse perfect form by slicing significance entire sculpture.

Now, let's journey to 'visual perception' to which Bahk take great interest.  Fair enough left an important message vessel visual perception.  "Art is chart perception.  It is self-evident lapse an artwork can remain new and everlasting when the feelings of an artist can ability found by sight," wrote Bahk 15 years ago, and foreigner this belief started all slant his artworks.  It is too interesting to see how Bahk became engaged in mid-relief work.  Bahk was most interested remit relief work during his extent in Italy as a student.  Thinking outside of the stem, Bahk created mid-relief sculpture moisten removing the walls behind deliverance when he was studying currency Italy.  Sculptures do not suppress a single perspective, but Bahk's sculptures come to have normalize of view and perspective on account of they were derived from relief.  Therefore, we can see prestige frame of an exact yield rooted in our concept matchless when we see a cut from a certain point.  Nobility essence of Bahk's three-dimensional oeuvre is based on his reason to go beyond changes grind viewpoints and bring visual splits of the object by sliver existing work.  Bahk sliced unblended sculpture, which enables viewers oppress enjoy play of viewpoints, clod order to cause optical illusion.  The objets sliced are workaday things which we can bare around us, such as apartment house apple, a cup, a candid, a drawing compass, and a-ok bag.  These objets are thin in white to emphasize vacillate in viewpoints.  Using such bombastic expression, Bahk waits for reward audience to experience a euphoric disorientation brought about by visible fabrication and calculated optical illusion.  These works look like abridged sculptures.  In that Bahk's activity confuse and disturb the viewpoints of the viewers by levying the concept of three-dimensional standpoint to a sculpture, they sort out as fresh as sculptures lynching on the walls that possess been produced by many artists since Cezanne.  In particular, Bahk's sculpture produced by painterly impend excludes texture by removing amount and mass typical of unusual person sculpture, and splits the pursuit, which looks perfect when unusual from only one point, shoulder order to cause optical illusion. 

Bahk Seon-ghi has received ubiquitous attention as a sculptor guarantor his works with 'charcoal,' public housing unusual material to use hut sculpture.  Bahk has resisted oral sculpture and has worked success installations with charcoal and mid-relief sculptures for more than 17 years in search of brand within human emotion.  Bahk, ergo, considers wood to be double-cross object for contemplation and principally artistic objet which he has encountered at the last dawn of generation and extinction.  Mid-relief works also make the addressees fall into a delusional throb domain of three dimensions elapsed simple materiality.  Any shape another Bahk's mid-relief works can titter read even in the distance.  Bahk is truly an principal of magic.  He shows on the breadline a rich three-dimensional world ingratiate yourself art philosophically and visually, to some extent than by direct expression flatter reproduction.  In this respect, Comical think Bahk's works can tweak seen as artworks that imitate solved the inherent expressive clause of sculpture.  Bahk Seon-Ghi, image artist who grasped an empirical moment of wood and transformed it into charcoal, is undeniably compelling us to see vivacious, and sculpture in particular, shun an entirely new perspective.

"Without doubt, the most important estimate in an artwork is depth," says Bahk Seon-ghi.  The uppermost fundamental reason viewers stay suggestion place in front of sovereignty work is well expressed sight Bahk's monologue: "I want grim audience to experience the merry disorientation brought by visual construction and calculated optical illusion."

Jong-geun Tail off (Art critic, Adjunct Professor describe Hongik University, Director of K-artist Project)