II Yuzu (Seoul, South Korea)
Biography:
24 years old. Being in the Department of Korean Language and Literature in University. With my special feature as the center, I shoot and write about unusual sexual experience, gender and the way of love. I have had immense interest in ‘the body-modification to lizard, snake and golden fish since long ago. Some of the work on the ‘Modification’, ‘<暗い白: hypo-romance>’, have been introduced to <Vostok magazine>. I start every morning with shaving my eyebrow clearly, and I’m a bartender who dances at night till being shattered into broken ankle. I believe that humankind can change everything from inner-side of itself to entire surroundings. And I believe the purity of dark things.
Artist Statement:
I answered to the question of ‘You became 23 years old.’, I go like ’23 years of surviving’. Especially for me, last year, it was a very special year, my 23rd year of life. I became little bit more expressive about the thing that should be hidden in my opinion. And I loved a lot in experimental ways. Starting with shaving my eyebrow, I finally decided to do the body-modification. I completely broke off the contact with my dad. Being cut off from my brother with being told ‘you are a monster’ It may be seem imprudent that my hinted sincerity. Sometimes, My hope seems attractive to someone. But, mostly, even to my lover, I realized that it seems like giving a feeling of hatred. All of the things I’d been through, was in my 23rd summer.
Kept being expelled, and ill. I self-tortured my self by walking hours and hours. From early evening to lightly dark dawn, I feel the pure freedom for real when I walk a lonesome area of the city. I could even climb on the wall and run as much as I wanted. When I felt tired, I could fell anywhere. When I felt sorrow, I could broke down and cried. The appearance I eager for and the way of relationship was not harmful for others, but it was continuously declined. In the same vein, I did the my night doings at night that I couldn’t do under the daytime. The work, <lovefool>, colored pictures, is about my personal story, love story, wander of my emotion, situation of my family. It will be continued as my most personal story of work. And the work, <暗い白: hypo-romance>, is about my body-modification and night dreams, scars and trauma. Both works are very same as a recording and suppression, but I shoot them anyway because of the love. Deeply or slightly, I thank to all of the relationship connected to me. And with that relationship, here I am miraculously. When I got hurt by them, I felt painful and delightful at the same time cause it seemed like a evidence of the love. Even though, facing accident by the lover, being kicked to street, Being rejected with my naked sincere heart, I gladly hope to undertake all the sufferings because all of the affair are so precious to me.
Practice Statement: How does photographing on film (or using your material photographic process of predilection) inform your artistic practice?
When I use digital camera, the shot image come up in the screen directly. And, it is inevitable to see that and hefting it with my own criteria. So if it doesn’t fit to my criteria, I should have to shoot more and more till the image I wanted to come out. So that, I don’t like this at all because I felt it like fake and edited act. Especially for <lovefool> and <暗い白: hypo-romance>, I strictly follow my rule(shoot in film), because these works are archival things. The images of these works are shot by 1 or 2~3 times of shooting. Since I did not(also could not) confirm the images through the screen immediately, it came out with unexpected mood, whole new detail that couldn’t check yet. Sometimes it makes me regrettable. But I think this crisscross of process of shooting is resemb le closely the memory. So that I keep shoot by flim, at the most, I did the bracketing shooting. Originally, memory always crisscross with the truth, therefore memory is getting more precious and pitiful. The texture and sense of color of film helps a lot. When it comes to <lovefool>, the atmosphere of the streets of neon lights was expressed hyperrealistically and also unrealistically very well with a cartoonish features of the film. And about <暗い白: hypo-romance>, the rough particle of B/W film did a great role in expressing a feeling of the scar and old memory.
