Both of these installations/statues were on the same floor of the Museum of Art and Design, because they are in many ways very similar, the obvious being that they’re both made by Korean artists. However, the similarities also show for the materials and the aesthetic of the two pieces.
Both pieces are made from materials that were once part of the world before. The Bullman is made from recycled tires, while the Uptown Girl is made of fiberglass and inked photographs. The Bullman is made from relics that came off the street, tires that had its artist, Yong Ho Ji (and probably other people too) had used to tread diverse ground before being made into a sculpture; while Uptown girl is made from photographs, diverse scenes and memories from the mind of its artist Seung Hyo Jang. Both sculptures are Frankensteins recreated from the flesh of the world, and they both exhume a feeling that they were relics, that their stories were long.
I sympathized with the two pieces of art, because I often think that I’m made from the world too. I sometimes imagine that my soul is a magnetic ball that rolls and holds onto everything that it comes past. Sometimes, I don’t believe that I’m something designed unique and special. Sometimes I feel like I’m made from the things I do, eat, read, create. One of the reasons I hold childhood friends dearly is because they have all shaped me. I even hold video games dearly because now that I look back, I realize that half of my imagination was constructed from video game worlds back during my childhood. I love forests and dungeons and fighting big monsters. I respect the old people in my neighborhood because I once loved staring at them, and I think that fed my love for history.
I don’t believe that we can be separate entities from everything else in the world. Henry David Thoreau is one of America’s greatest philosopher fascinated in rebellion (civil disobedience), in being the man to stop the machine, in isolating himself from society and hiding in the woods. He lived around the same time as Walt Whitman, and they were friends. But their philosophies clashed. Thoreau lived by self-reliance. Whitman existed only in community.
I want to be a mix of those philosophies. I know that I can’t survive being entirely self-reliant. I’m made by people and places. And I know that I can’t exist only in a community, because I believe that from the amalgam of the different things that make me, a unique whole emerges.
Artist: Yong Ho Ji
Title: Bullman
Date of Work: 2010
Materials/Medium: Used Tires
Duration: 11/1/2011 – 2/19/2012
Genre: Sculpture
Venue: MAD
Friends? I was alone.
Artist: Seung Hyo Jang
Title: The Uptown Girl
Date of Work: 2010
Materials/Medium: Ink, resin, fiberglass
Duration: 11/1/2011 – 2/19/2012
Genre: Sculpture
Venue: MAD
Friends? I was alone.
