Yong Ho Ji is a Korean artist who uses old, recycled tire scraps to make amazing sculptures. He uses rubber tires as his medium because he thinks of the material as a mutation, something that comes from nature but ends up looking entirely different from the original form. He also likes the material because it’s malleable and a close approximation to skin and muscles.
This 29-year-old has made a career out of sculpting larger-than-life animals. His Chelsea, New York studio is filled with hyenas, horses, felines, and the menacing ram’s head. They’re all built from black tires. To Ji, rubber symbolizes mutation. “The product is from nature, from the white sap of latex trees, but here it’s changed and the color is now black. The look is scary.”
He tried experimenting with clay and bronze, but the sculptures looked too much like robots. Rubber is very flexible, much more like skin and muscles, he claims to believe, which gives him more freedom to try capturing the unspoken rawess of animal expression, like the horse’s wistful glance or the way the hyena cocks its hind leg, ready to spring into an attack.
http://english.ganaart.com/artists/ji-yong-ho/
His images of imagined mutants grew out of his life in Seoul, where he has seen a lot of fierce political debate over genetic engineering. In school, he read Darwin and was fascinated by how the theory of evolution could be applied to man’s own attempts at manipulating with nature. Already, he says, cats and dogs are bred to emphasize their domesticated traits and downplay their wild sides.
The sculptures can be taken as warnings, according to this visionary artist. In his opinion, if we fail to exercise enough caution in our tinkering with the genetics of natural selection, we may soon lose the ability to see animals in their natural state altogether. Yong Ho grew up next door to a school for children with Down’s Syndrome, and the children made an impression that stays with him to this day.
These kids all have a smile is that he sees as very pure, and Ho tries to reproduce that look which he saw in their eyes., somewhat sad and vulnerable., in the features of the imaginery animals his astonishing talent allows him to create. He chooses animals that are often seen as “monsters,” then obsesses over every detail, each muscle, sinew and marble eye, to try to restore them to their natural beauty as he sees it.
His work is slowly beginning to achieve the recognition it thoroughly deserves. A shark he sculpted recently went for $145,000 at auction, and in December 2009, the Gana Art Gallery, where his fantastic artworks have earned him a prestigious live-in arts residency and studio, held his biggest opening in Seoul yet.
These epic sculptures contain layering and detail that is simply staggering, and you can be quite certain that we will be seeing a lot more of this wonderful talent in future years, with new works that we can all look forward to with relish.
http://www.designaside.com/3913/arte/i-pneumatici-di-ji-yong-ho
