Introduction

The theme of my works, problems of the contemporary society through the eyes of arts, has been inspired from wooden dolls found in Korean tombs of our ancestors, whose grandiose dignity despite their small shapes make us submissively listen to their warnings and wishes for the contemporary society.
Many recently arising environmental and humanistic problems such as the natural resource exploitation and the disappearing middle class have become a too important issue for us to just pretend that they do not exist. So, instead of avoiding, I boldly express those issues through arts of harmony and disharmony, naivety and sophistication, and symbolization and contrasting under the title of “the ubiquitous unseen” – Contemporary problems and conflicts are next to us everywhere, yet few of us care to see them. As much eccentric, satirical and somewhat provocative as the colors and shapes of my works are, the warnings and wishes implied in each work are urgent and desperate. In addition, besides plainly showing the problem, I emphasize the importance of keeping the potentiality, the something that never changes despite the unexpectedly fast changing and demoralizing world. For example, our conscious, pursuit of happiness and basic desires do not and should not change with societal advances, and thus are what we want to keep intact through generations and generations. This potentiality, the very basic human nature as if embedded since the creation of the first human being, is what defines us as humans, and is symbolized by using dots or repetitive patterns in my sculptures and paintings. At the same time, those sculptures and paintings are so active and alive in color and shape that they seem to bring us the image of the endless escape to the wonderland outside the gloomy contemporary society. Furthermore, the repeatedly appearing pattern of the five bright colors like red, orange, yellow, blue, and green is the emblem of the traditional beauty inspired from the Korean traditional clothing, Hanbok, and whets our appetite for the past. Meanwhile anomalous shapes of my sculptures, as if they are the result of the future biotechnology, wittily criticize the unsolved problems consoling our saddened mind and adding a taste of pleasantry to our lives. Awakening the ignorance of people, I hope to make a contribution to the realization of our dream of utopia where there is no boundary between nations, races, or religions, and I assure that I will continue to work until that day when every human being in the whole world can genuinely smile.