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Youniverse
<Youniverse> is a large-scale drawing series that started in 2007.
Summary
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Youniverse No. 1 (2007-2008) 1m x 1m / Pen on Paper - Fiction World
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Youniverse No. 2 (2010-2012) 0.28mx 6m / Pen on Concubine - Real World
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Youniverse No. 3 (2013-2022) 1.1mx 11m / Pen & Ink on Scroll Paper (Damaged) - Ideal World
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Youniverse No. 4 (2022 - Planned) 1.1m x 9m / Ink on Paper Roll & West Sea Tidal Flat & Fly Mud - Empty World
This is a large-scale series drawing of major cities and the surrounding natural environment with a 0.3mm pen and korean traditional ink. The starting point of the <Youniverse> series is my childhood experience of having to live in a distant city due to unwillingness. Numbers (No.) are given in the order of completion, which becomes the name of the work, and there are a total of 3 completed works and 1 unfinished work. Some of the major buildings and famous streets representing each city are drawn as real through aerial photos and bird's-eye views, but geographically, they are all reconstructed and placed in fictional locations. As a result, cities around the world and their monuments are organically connected in the same space as if they were a single city, regardless of their actual geographic location or distance. Accordingly, regardless of province, region, country, or continent, rivers and mountains (=natural objects), including roads and buildings (=artificial objects), all share a single universe, and this It constitutes one of the most important messages. <Youniverse> is made on paper in a different shape for each number and is usually made up of a huge size. The complex structures of the city are filled with natural objects drawn all over the paper. The whole world is viewed from the bird's view point of view, and structures and shapes partially revealed through the harmony of natural and artificial objects are transcribed (Korean, Chinese, Roman characters) and replaced with meaningful words or sentences. It is a kind of transpose cipher concept called Scytale (an ancient Greek cipher around 400 BC), and in the <Youniverse> series, it is realized in the form of a sentence when the picture is folded or tilted at a certain angle. The list of things replaced by words or sentences in the structure is, for example, a universal human emotion such as Love - Sadness - Loneliness or anti- war (No War ). ) - Freedom - There are progressive concepts that mankind wants to improve, such as equality ( 平等, Equality).
your universe number one
2007-2008 - 1m x 1m - Pen on Paper - Fictional World
1/1
Reality is reproduced through the experiences and memories of each individual who accepts it despite its existence, and is characterized by imperfection (individualization) that is reconstructed in the process. Due to this, reality is ultimately reduced to a passive existence that is projected onto a fictional consciousness with subjectivity and editing, and as a result, all realities are naturally subjectivized and finally form a fictional world. The imperfect spatial experience of my childhood and adolescence combined my reality without rules, and it soon became a fiction, <Your Universe> No. 1.
your universe number two
2010-2012 - 0.28 mx 6 m - Pens on a Concubine - The Real World
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2
6
1
1/6
1/1
It is an expression of the coexistence and continuity of two existential countries, Korea and France. Due to the nature of the painting, the whole is one side, but it is divided into partial sides again, and the world of existence reconstructed from the side is built through the form that is combined but also easily separated. The two worlds are precisely divided, left and right, but they have their own direction, which is strongly expressed in the sharing of natural objects such as rivers, seas, mountains, and fields. When the ends of each side are folded at the same angle, the transposition code 'Come as you are' appears, which is also one of the messages indicating the direction of the two worlds and is an expression of 'the world as it is'.
COME AS YOU R
your universe number 3
2013-2022 - 1.1mx 11m - Pen & Ink on Rolled Paper (Damaged) - A World of Wonders
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2
5
1
1/5
1/1
It is the largest scale that expands much more rapidly than the two worldviews that established the two countries, which means the coexistence of the East and the West . Earth (whether religious or scientific) implies a utopia (= utopia). If No. 1 and No. 2 are fiction and existence created based on personal experiences, No. 3 can project the ideas of others, that is, all of you. No. 3, which directly referenced Mongyudowondo ( 夢遊桃源圖) by An Gyeon , an early Joseon painter, is outside the current world through a blank paper placed in the center of the East and West. It implies an ideal world (which can never be drawn).
This is further expanded through the novel <Space Dust> and shares one worldview with the drawing <Your Universe> No. 3. The place where 'Ai', the main character in the novel, arrives as dust after death is also the space of nothing in the middle of the drawing, which means the end of the child heading to the ideal world. Also, there is a large river that runs through the entire 11m canvas, and the shape of the river is ' Life flows ' in Hangeul, which is an expression of the direction we are wandering between fiction and existence, and flows toward the ideal world we want to reach in the end. It is all your desires to sleep.
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Angyeon ( 安堅, ?~?) - Mongyudowondo ( 夢遊桃源圖) - Ink on silk - 38.7 x 106.5cm
구역1
구역2
구역5
구역1
1/5
A map showing rivers and their districts in the form of "Life flows"
Theft of your universe #3 (2015)
At the end of 2015, there was an incident where <Your Universe> #3, which was sent from France to Korea for a delivery service, was stolen. It was continuously reported in the media of both countries for about six months and even the Korean International Cooperation Investigation Unit intervened to investigate. As a result, it was revealed that someone intentionally stolen it from the French post office. ) was found in The painting was retrieved, but moved unprotected for a long time (predictably), causing permanent damage to the paper, torn and stained. However, I left it as it was, thinking that it would rather harmonize with the message of the 3rd work itself, which hopes to project the ideas of as many others as possible. The ideal world that each individual envisions will of course be different, which foreshadows an ominous collision and may have already contained irreversible damage. Permanent damage to the painting caused by theft is sublimated into this, and the 3rd message is placed as a further reinforced device.
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Various articles reported in the Korean-French media
SBS 8 o'clock news report
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