Gwon Osang

Gwon Osang takes hundreds of photos when he is creating a piece. He then takes bits and pieces of the photographs and sculpts a 3-D version of the subject. Elements of realism mixed with distortion makes the audience see the reflections from the fuzzy lens we peek through. In the Korean art world, Gwon has been widely recognized as someone working in photography; not once has he been called a sculptor. The artist, who graduated from the Hong-ik University sculpture department, calls himself a sculptor. Gwon was born in Seoul, 1974 lives and works in Seoul.

His art is described as “A new technique of illusions making tiny but visible cracks in the territory of the Korean art scene established by the 1990s.” Gwon’s photo-sculptures require a tedious process to create his quilted tapestry of human attributes. After different parts of the model’s body are shot with the same light source, the film is developed and the prints are pieced together to form a sculptural body (made without looking at the model). The fact that Gwon used this process to achieve a sculptural end-result is without precedent in the history of contemporary art.

With his project, The Flat, Osang cut out pictures from magazines to make sculptures and captured them by camera. His sculptures are lightweight and rarely does he work with traditional heavier sculpting material such as clay or bronze. As a student his motto was “never make anything that a friend and I can’t easily move.” He participates in many exhibits all over the world and you can get a taste of this interesting work here at his gallery.

From Talent Speaks