구의 전개도는 없다
No Planar Figure of Sphere
2018
Silicone, foamex board,curtains, single channel
3D animation video(2’43”) Dimensions variable
photography: Sangtae Kim,
photography: Sangtae Kim
No Planar Figure of Sphere
Artist's Note
I was studying abroad at the time of the Sewol ferry disaster, with a physical distance that prevented immediate access to the incident. The influx of fake news reports on the incident in the early days also kept me from responding to the incident in an appropriate way. Having been unable to empathize with the event back then, I felt a terrible sense of frustration and guilt when I learned at last what had actually happened. With this sense of guilt, I wanted to make something that, albeit not engaging directly with the disaster, could compel the viewer to question the very grounds for perception, belief, and knowledge, especially in terms of mediation and immediacy.
When the viewer enters the exhibition space, they first encounter a flat sculpture: a spread- out geometric form made out of silicon. Behind the curtains, planar figures of a cube, a cylinder, and a tetrahedron are either hanging on the wall or sitting on the floor. They are the molds I used to make the surface of those 3D figures out of silicone. And there is a flattened human surface that looks like a face mask on the floor. I got in contact with a 3D scanning company in Canada and asked for anthropometric data of their 3D-scanned human models. They gave me info on a model named Matt: he was 188 centimeters tall, and weighed 173 pounds. After purchasing a 3D scan file of him from the company, I typed in his actual life- size body measurements to create a planar figure of Matt and cast its surface. Despite a lot of data loss throughout the whole process, I managed to create, so to speak, a skin of the 3D model, which was then installed in the gallery space under the title Supposedly Matt. The video projected on the wall shows how the planar figures become three-dimensional shapes. Although the title of the exhibition literally suggests that there are "no planar figures of sphere," the video shows a fake planar figure becoming a sphere, which is generally known as the appearance of the globe when flattened to fit a two-dimensional map. The same applies to the human body. Thus, it appears as if both the sphere and the human body have a planar figure like the other three-dimensional shapes at the exhibition. After gathering real and fake information from the space behind the curtains, the viewer comes back out to see the sculptures on the floor again, which invites her to imagine what they would look like when given a full volume. However, the way that these "skins" are laid out makes it difficult for the viewer to conjecture them in their full three-dimensional forms, even with all the information provided in the space behind the curtain.
What follows is an unsent letter for Matt:
Dear Matt,
Hi. I am Jiyoung Yoon, an artist living and working in Seoul, Korea.
I’ve got anthropometric data of yours and Lisa’s from a 3D scanning company in Canada. All I know about you is your first name, that you are an actual living (I hope you are alive) white male, 188cm tall, and weigh 173lbs. Seeing that your height is shown in metric and weight in pounds, I am guessing that you might be Canadian. Or maybe it's just how the company archives their data. I have three different friends with the name Matt in Korea, a fact from which I think it will be safe to deduce that your name is very common, like mine. Anyway, I bought your 3D scanned image file and created a planar figure of your body. There must have been some data loss during the scanning, and, as you may know, there is so much curvature on the human body that it is impossible to create a planar figure of a human body, just as we cannot create one for spheres.
However, I tried my best to create the "skin" of your body and installed it on the floor of the gallery space. I also made a 3D animation of how that planar figure can be reconstructed into...you. As I told you earlier, it is impossible to do so due to the curvature, but I faked it. It would be great if I could show you the video. I realized that I have used your body for making many different artworks. I sometimes think of you and feel guilty somehow. If you are alive, I could possibly run into you somewhere. Do you think I will be able to recognize your face when I do though?
With gratitude, Jiyoung from Seoul