City Romance
 
In contemporary society we usually live putting an excessive importance on material value, undergoing a sense of loss and alienation within an enormous social system, and feeling a strong attachment to life. This work is a manifestation of my sympathy with those that feel the burdens of contemporary society.
 
My primary concerns are joy and sorrow in our lives, and our general quality of life. In my previous series Process, I symbolically represented nature not only as an ideal space we pine for, but as a part of life we have to overcome. In another series Sports, I alluded to the joy and sorrow of our lives, employing amateur sports games as symbols implying the cross-sections of life. My recent work City Romance is an extension of such concerns. I tried to speak about the boundary between man and the city, harmony and discord by showing man in a city that we belong to and that we feel is an ideal place. I intend to express aspects of our lives symbolically by showing a clash between human gestures in an urban landscape.
 
“I sometimes feel a desire to fly. Is it really a wish to fly? This is perhaps a symbol of my desire to feel the wind in a high place and to be free. I at times dream such a dream, looking over the roof of my house.”  (Excerpted from the artist statement on City Romance)
 
In City Romance, an extension of the Process series, I intend to show aspects of our lives in a city, and the joy and sorrow of life within it, by returning contemporary people to the actual space of the city (the realistic space we presently exist in), breaking away from representing nature as an ideal space.
 
 By Sang-Taek Oh