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Photographer Atta Kim poses in front of his work ``The Last Supper'' at the Rodin Gallery. / Courtesy of Rodin Gallery |
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
Photographer Atta Kim believes that ``all that exists will eventually disappear.'' A photograph is meant to capture an image, but Kim is interested in taking photographs that show how objects and humans disappear.
The photographs, on display at Kim's solo exhibition ``ON-AIR" at the Rodin Gallery, explore his philosophy of human existence.
``I began with the core concept that every single existing being in the universe will eventually disappear. I tried to compare this concept to the nature of photography, which tends to record and remember everything. I have used two types of processes to realize this comparison: one is to employ very long exposures to make all the moving objects within a scene disappear. The other is to digitally superimpose many different images so that they are subsumed within a new, composite image,'' Kim said, in the exhibition catalogue.
In his photographs, there are no cars or people in New York's busy Times Square, and there are no crowds in the markets in Delhi, India. He took these photographs using an 8x10-inch large-scale camera.
Since it is taken with a long exposure, the objects disappear depending on their speed of movement. This is why the people moving around the streets of New York and Delhi ``disappear,'' and the constant stream of cars is reduced to streaks of light. Only the buildings remain in the photographs.
In superimposing images, Kim wants to create an entirely new image. ``Although each individual image still has its own characteristics, you no longer see such individuality in the resulting image,'' he said.
This can be seen in his parody of Leonardo Da Vinci's ``The Last Supper,'' where he layered images of Jesus and the apostles on top of each other. In this way, the apostles' images are in Jesus, and vice versa.
``100 Countries/ 100 Men'' appears to be a soft-focused portrait of a male, but it is actually composed of layers of 100 male portraits from 100 countries. The project took over three years.
The exhibit also includes photographs of the Demilitarized Zone, which divides North and South Korea. Kim is said to be the first person to photograph the DMZ for ``art.''
Other images from the ``On-Air" series include an auto show, Tiananmen Square, a soccer game, a melting ice sculpture of Mao Zedong and a couple having sex for an hour. The exhibit is a continuation of Kim's ``On-Air Project," which was shown at the International Center of Photography, New York. He was the first Asian artist to hold an exhibition there.
Born in South Gyeongsang Province in 1956, Kim majored in mechanical engineering at Changwon University. It was only in the mid-1980's that he began to pursue photography. He came up with photograph series such as ``Human Cultural Assets'' (1989-90) and ``Deconstruction'' (1991-95). It was his ``Museum Project'' (1995-2000), in which he took photos of people in transparent acrylic boxes, that caught the attention of the art world.
The exhibition runs through May 25. Admission is 3,000 won for adults and 2,000 won for students aged 18 years and younger. Rodin Gallery is located on the 1st floor of Samsung Life Insurance Building in Jongno, downtown Seoul. To get there, get off at City Hall station, Line 2, Exit 8 and walk for five minutes, Visit www.rodingallery.org or call (02) 2259-7781
cathy@koreatimes.co.kr
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