Younghoon Ko

Ko Younghoon (b. 1952), who paints surprisingly hyper-realistic images, tries to make a reality through painting. The dichotomous boundary between the real and the illusion seen in the painting by René Magritte strongly influenced Ko’s views of art. Ko refuted Magritte’s view that the image is merely significant and that an image without the signified is merely an illusion. To him, the image is an illusion, but at the same time is real. Furthermore, the image positioned as a representation is sensuous and does not require comprehending linguistic elements. Attempting only to embody the real through visual depiction, Ko completes his work through realistic representation. Though he embodied illusions close to the real by arranging heterogeneous subject matter such as flowers, feathers and stones on books in the earlier years of his career, he later included the variability of the objects to represent the reality itself. To this end, he changed the focal points in the work, or portrayed objects and shadows simultaneously in an empty background, thus emphasizing the change of objects according to spaces. Ko Younghoon continues his experiments to expand the significance of painting, endeavoring to transcend the limits of representation by erasing the boundary between illusion and reality.