Youngjae Oh

[artist's note]
My interest in the ancient practice of pictographs, or amulets, is not only because of the outward appeal of the images, but also because of the mystery of their symbolic composition. Due to the shamanistic nature of amulets, where the images themselves exert some sort of magical power, they have been downplayed as magical tricks and superstitions, and their aesthetic world has not received the attention it deserves. Out of a vague fascination and interest, I began to study amulets in a sculptural way, and discovered that they contain a whole universe within them, filled with aesthetic materials of the highest refinement and beauty.

Rooted in magical mysticism, the images of pictograms are an aesthetic manifestation of human creativity and have the power to connect the human spirit with the material world. Images of archetypes handed down from ancient times, symbols of concepts that symbolically illustrate the principles of creation of all things in the universe, abstract shapes based on human intuition of the invisible world, such as the flow of chi... Amulets made up of images of these symbols are an original art that makes the invisible world visible through the exercise of human imagination. In particular, in its creative sculptural principle, there is a creative and unconventional sculpture that is being tried in various ways in contemporary art. This means that there are infinite possibilities that can be reborn as a new sculpture outside of any fixed framework that is outdated.

My work is a creative attempt to present a new world of beauty by reinterpreting pictograms, which have travelled a long way from ancient times, in a modern visual language. Despite the abundance of visual images, modern people are constantly hungry for new forms of art. Due to the multimedia art environment that combines different elements such as images, text, and sound, contemporary art seeks new ways of looking, new ways of reading, and new ways of listening. Unlike in the past, contemporary art now actively utilises non-linear, interactive and integrated media such as video media, the internet and mobile phones, including temporality. In today's digital media environment, where a complex convergence of media is taking place, amulets have infinite possibilities to develop into a new art form through the sculptural dynamism of their symbolic representations, which move between pictures and text. As such, amulets as a symbolic sculptural language are an artistic language with vast potential to suggest new directions for contemporary art and expand its scope of expression.

Passed down through the millennia, pictograms hold a wealth of symbolic imagery. Their sculptural exploration is a new attempt to transform them into deep and delicate images that capture unique cultural sentiments. It is also a fascinating way to communicate with the invisible and mysterious energies of the universe through images. The creative challenge of exploring the fusion of various mediums and the new integration of secret pictogram images is a joyful play of discovering another world of time.