INVISIBLE

Koo Kyung Sook’s new work, Invisible, seeks to present things that cannot be seen and cannot be felt.  It focuses on the cells and the primary bodily elements composing water, lymph, and blood, whose existence is intangible. She does not use scientific method or technology, such as microscopes or infrared imaging, to reveal these imperceptible elements. Instead, she uses her own body as an expressive tool to give them form.

To this end Koo assembles multiple sheets of photographic paper to create a life size matrix. After exposing the paper to light she covers it with a layer of bubble wrap soaked in developer and then places her body on its surface. The developer and bubble wrap respond to the pressure and forms of her body leaving an imprint on the photographic paper. She uses the computer to enlarge the resulting image to a monumental scale and then prints it on traditional Korean Mulberry paper. The irregular “bubbles”, the drips and pools of excess developer, and the white of the paper, create an organic pictorial image.

Invisible extends the investigation presented in an earlier series of works titled Markings (2001) which were the result of the interaction between steel plates, water, fabric, and her body. It also builds on ideas and methods developed in Secret Garden (2002) in which she created images by applying photographic emulsion directly onto selected parts of her body. In terms of creating photographic images without a camera, Man Ray’s Rayograms might come to mind. Koo’s work, however, suggests the active presence and life of the body, while Man Ray seems to suggest the shadow and absence of form.

Although she borrows the computer to increase scale, the images cannot be placed in the category of digitally generated art. For the most part, her method falls outside existing photographic categories and might best be called bodygraphs. Regardless how we might choose to label the work, Invisible presents a new synthesis of her unique and introspective investigation of the body, identity, and existence.

Kho, Chung Hwan (Seoul, 2005)

Art Critic

(From Koo Kyung Sook: Invisible, BIBI Space, Daejeon, Korea, exhibition brochure, 2005)