22 Nov 2007 — 22 Dec 2007
Yoon Sang-Yuel
F E A R

I am gazing into the target. The point I have to stare at will be decided when my body coincides with my spirit. Yet, my instinctive fear still exists even at the meeting point between my mind and body.
- Yoon Sang-Yuel

Fear, derived from socially stereotypical ideas and external suppression and conflicts at the boundary of life, has for a long time coexisted with the artist and has been something to overcome. Yoon states that his work begins when he admits such fear and has a symbiotic connection with it. Here, fear has a lexical meaning referring to dread and also suggests something that is “false evidence appearing real.” Yoon works in a wide range of mediums including video, installation, and drawing and represents elements such as truth and fear that are hard to give form to or concretely represent, visualizing them in his own language.

A magnifying glass swinging from side to side like a pendulum on a white screen (Moving Target, 2006 / 6 mm video) symbolizes those who question their identity and have psychological conflicts as well as the artist himself. This situation is represented through three visual forms: swaying, vagueness, and vividness. This reveals the ‘myself within me’ who ceaselessly pursues answers, while feeling restlessness. He is interested in targeting and reading objects using symbolic means such as a magnifying glass and a target. In this sense, the series of 40 drawings entitled Dust is the traces of life he has chronicled and a clue into deciphering such symbols.

Yoon’s Optical Evidence series, the most noticeable work in this exhibition, is made of a light panel the artist has consistently favored. As a cold cathode florescent lamp is built in this light panel, plaid like a Baduk, or a checkerboard pattern gives out light

Applied with the principles of the brightness and refraction of light, Yoon Sang-Yuel glues about 1,600 mechanical pencil wicks varying in thickness (0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 0,9, 2.9 mm) on a thoroughly calculated structure from the clockwise to opposite-clockwise direction, from the inside to outside, or from the outside to inside direction one by one. The repetitive work may look somewhat rigid and merely technical. This work is for the artist an artistic activity like a performance and simultaneously a psychological healing method. The light panel lighting is actually used as a means for psychological healing and the light from Optical Evidence offers a sense of convenience and the experience of self-reflection, if seen for a long time.

Graduated from the Kyungwon University Department of Painting, Yoon partook in the Cite Internationale des Arts residency program in Paris and the Digital Art in a System group exhibition in Seoul. Showcased at this exhibition are about 17 Optical Evidence series and 40 drawings he did for last three years. In this show we may discover Yoon’s diverse attempts to tenaciously explore various kinds of suspicions he met in his everyday life.
        
Optical Evidence
Lead on light panel, OHP film, printed paper, acrylic frame
59 x 49 x 10 cm
2005