JungPyo Hong – Unique Reproduction

My current series deals with the idea of different types of execution existing in a single frame, creating balance and friction simultaneously. Mixing paint can be a very delicate exercise, demanding expert discipline. From adding an extra color, to drying on the canvas or pallet, I see limitless possibilities – and at the same time feel limited. Therefore I use a digital camera in order to suspend the process by introducing a sister medium with its own potential, and to manipulate the content for extra possibilities. A diminishing aura – the aura emitted by paints only – actually helps increase my freedom. This transformation, from small blobs of paint to rather large and flat prints where paint and photography merge, becomes a foundation.

At this point I was thinking about Thomas Demand's strategy, which is to use the camera as a tool (which is rooted in this real world) to take pictures of what only seemingly exists in the real world, but has actually been created by artistic media. Demand has created such a tension between reality and the fantastical world that anyone who views his work is easily transported to the state of suspension in awe. I myself was also attracted by its strength: using print and paint, organic shapes and artificial shapes, his work fulfills and satisfies by the skillful execution of its medium and methodology.

This similar process of mixing "real-world" and "fantasy-world" media creates an interesting dilemma in my work. Unlike Demand, however, I take pictures of things that are lies, which are fantasy: things that do not exist in this world. Photography is traditionally about capturing elements of the real world and bringing them into the world of representation. This has been the dominant use of photography since its inception. I am attracted to a related point that which Jean Baudrillard posed. He pointed out the fact that we can no longer tell what the real world is, because we are surrounded by mass reproductions of objects. Mass reproductions that look deceptively like the real world, but are, of course, still just reproductions – fakes, fantasies – no matter how realistic they look. My work is implicated in Baudrillard's observation. Within the layer of my process, going from mixing paint to taking photographs, I hope to lose the beginning and the end, confuse and confound the thing in itself and the representation. I hope that this will succeed at suspending the viewers in the middle of the two processes. I will succeed if the viewer stays suspended, unable to reach the opposing endings and grasp them; yet enjoying and reveling in the suspension.