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○ Exhibition Information
Artist | Hein-Kuhn Oh
Title | Middlemen
Period| May 3 ~ June 17, 2012
Place | Artsonje Center
Hours | 11:00pm - 7:00pm Tuesday - Sunday, Mondays Closed
Tel | 02-733-8945
Website | www.artsonje.org




Photographer Hein-Kuhn Oh, represented by Kukje Gallery will have a solo exhibition Middlemen at Artsonje Center Seoul from May 3 to June 17, 2012. In this exhibition, he shows portrait photographs of the army, navy and air force all around Korea. It is the first time to present portrait series of soldiers in a form of art in Korea and it was able to be realized by the support of the Ministry of National Defense since 2009.

Since 1998 Hein-kuhn Oh has worked as a documentary photographer capturing the social landscape of the Korean society; then, for the past ten years, his portrait photographs have reflected specific social groups within Korea regardless of gender and age. The artist reveals instability and fragility of their desire and emotion when they position themselves in the middle of contemporary social categories. His previous series include Americans Them (1989-91), Itaewon Story (1993-94), Gwangju Story (1995-96), Ajumma (1997-99), Girl’s Act (2003-04) and Cosmetic Girls (2007-08).

Whereas his previous series including Ajumma, Girl's Act, and Cosmetic Girl reveal inherent prejudice and stereotype in the Korean society through women's portraits, Oh presents a man’s unstable state of mind, conflicting between individuals and collectives through portraits of soldiers. While taking photographs of military troops, which signify a typical collective body symbolizing masculinity in the Korean society, he discovers that the concept of "we" is erased by facing individual soldiers. Therefore, Oh's portraits convey obscure anxiety situated in the middle ground of conflicting "we" and "I". Through a viewpoint of an absolute outsider, Oh excludes photographic devices such as harsh lighting, unusual casting and fabricated situation. He does not either criticize military, or represent it positively; his neutral attitude correlates with middle tone and lighting in photography. Instead, he focuses on the background of a picture to express a sense of isolation. The background of his pictures is a motive, and it undertakes the role of Mise-en-Scene that is intentionally juxtaposed with objects in his photography.

Hein-kuhn Oh states that his narrative perspective, which views military as Middleman, is merely his own reaction, but that it does not approach the essence of objects. The issue in his works is how one looks at an object, not what the object is. Thus, his photographs of soldiers arouse diverse responses depending on viewers' different personal and individual backgrounds as well as experiences of military duty. The portraits of soldiers, Middlemen series reveals “an anxiety of being in the state of middle” as an individual within the Korean society that tends to subordinate individuality within the concept of “we”.
Artist talk and docent program is scheduled, accompanied with the exhibition and the artist’s monograph Middlemen will be published. The presented works will be exhibited at the GoEun Museum of Photography in Busan from September 12 to November 20, 2012.
Contents provided by Artsonje Center.