Indepth Arts News:
"My name is Z: Sculptures and Installations by Young Korean Artist Wang Zi Won"
2008-02-02 until 2008-03-08
Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery
Amsterdam, ,
NL Netherlands
Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery is pleased to announce My name is Z, an exciting exhibition with sculptures and installations by young Korean artist Wang Zi Won (South Korea, 1980). The exhibition opens February 2, 2008 at 4 PM and will run through March 8. All existing philosophies are accomplished on the premise that I maintain self as ’I’. Modern philosophy starts from Descartes’ proposition of ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Wang Zi Won recreates himself through his mechanized sculptures and installations, by which he is showing the immortality of the human body.
“I believe that ‘I am’ is the absolute proposition until the present, and it is the modern civilization has been formed based on the proposition. However, if being of ‘I’ is freed from form of the body and our brain becomes computerized as ‘mechanization’ is progressed rapidly, therefore memory is expressed in binary numeral of 0 and 1, the division between thinking and data is collapsed, and our memory can be saved onto hard drive as a data of image and sound, could I truly be a human?”
In this exhibition, a life size reproduction of the artist is on display, sitting quietly on a chair with the head and eyes moving in a fluid sequence, reacting to the environment. Or is he pre-programmed to initiate action, not reaction? Or what to think of the Test tube, a tubed face in formaline trying desperately to breathe or communicate to us, not being able to talk?
The artist invokes the debate on mechanization, and sense of self. Is it a thing of the far future or is it already an integrated part of our lives? “For instance, if a human drives stick transmission automobile, in a broad sense, the human is mechanized suitable to the stick transmission automobile, and if the human drives automatic transmission automobile, the human is mechanized to the automatic transmission automobile.” Wang says. “We all live each day as a part of machine and mechanization deepens gradually. The body is gradually deprived. Yesterday, my finger took over remote control; today, the remote control takes over my finger. “
Wang Zi Won (1980) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. He studied at Chungang University, Seoul (B.F.A 2005, M.F.A candidate in Sculpture). This is the first time his work will be on display in the Netherlands.
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