The collages of Beomsik Won are born from dozens of photographs of architectural structures in London.
In the project Archisculptures, urban architecture is broken apart and then reassembled into images that seem to exist beyond the boundaries of the reality we know.
Beomsik Won is a South Korean visual artist. He studied photography and metal and jewellery design at universities in Seoul. Won later moved to London, where in 2012 he graduated from the Fine Art department of the Slade School of Art. Since 2008, Won has been teaching design and photography. His work has been shown at exhibitions in Paris, Hollywood, Seoul and London.
While studying in London, Won became fascinated by the eclectic character of the city's architectural environment. He was drawn to the richness of London's architecture: elegant buildings, baroque façades, vast shopping centres and famous theatres. The mingling of disparate architectural styles prompted Won to embark on a new project. The result was a series of fantastical black-and-white and colour giants.
At first I made only black-and-white images, but I realised the real world is not colourless. I'm not sure how the viewer perceives it, but the black-and-white version strikes me as more surreal.
First, Won chooses a subject for a new image and then sketches it in pencil. If the result is good enough, he searches his collection for suitable photographs of buildings. If no appropriate images can be found, Won takes to the streets in search of architectural motifs. Much like collectors who organise and classify their acquisitions with great care, the artist analyses individual fragments of the city and uses them to construct his 'archisculptures'.
My interest in architecture is tied to its scale and its pragmatism. Whenever I see enormous buildings or buildings with an interesting design, I photograph them. That's why I have thousands of them.
Beomsik Won, like all contemporary artists, finds himself compelled to explain his work through philosophy and quotations from great thinkers.
While working on the 'archisculptures' series, Won drew on the ideas of Russian film director Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein. By bringing together fragments of different structures within a single image, Won creates new meanings that had previously lain hidden 'beneath the surface' — stories of cities, eras and architectural styles, and sometimes of ideas encountered in works of philosophy. Won's primary interest is the investigation of things invisible to the eye, for, as the English journalist William Godwin observed: 'The invisible is the only reality.'
Beomsik Won's collages are a striking example of contemporary art that exists at the intersection of genres, styles and creative disciplines. Won's practice gives rise to architectural utopias that call into question our understanding of contemporary digital photography and probe the limits of human perception.
If you enjoyed the work of Beomsik Won, be sure to discover the city collages of Anastasia Savinova.
