Symptoms

Symptoms is a project that originates from the relationship between the morphogenetic structures of objects and contemporary society. Through photographic representation, it reproduces the physical details of objects in various images.

In medicine, symptoms indirectly indicate that a patient's body is in an abnormal state. Unlike signs, symptoms can be visually, sensorially, and clinically perceived by the patient. Expanding on this idea, I have considered visual symptoms not in relation to the human body, but to surrounding objects. To put it simply, all objects are "incomplete entities." No object is perfect in itself. For an airplane to fly, it requires not only fuel, wings, jet engines, an airline, and radiation, but also dinosaurs, surgeons, Mercedes-Benz, iPhones, and paper. If any of the sub-components that constitute an airplane fail, it will not be able to transport passengers from Seoul to Toulouse. The goal of <Symptoms> is to understand the world through the forms of objects and to consider objects as symptoms—tracing the subtle stories of surrounding time and space that they quietly reveal, and imagining them through photographic images.

I have long been working on interpreting the technical properties of objects as photographs and images, focusing on architect Louis Sullivan’s architectural design principle, “Form ever follows function.” While participating in an exhibition on the theme of the Anthropocene in Zurich, I learned that the form of an object is also determined by function, but at the same time, the form of an object can affect the structure of society and the environment. At this time, I imagined the possibility that form could determine function, contrary to Louis Sullivan’s principle. Taking an event in nature as an example, the function of flying could not be realized because there were no feathers before a bird flew in the sky, but as the Earth’s temperature rapidly decreased, it evolved to have feathers to keep warm, resulting in the bird gaining the function of flying. Here, the combination of feathers and wings was optimized for the function of flying.

The objects that I am usually interested in are the things that perform technical functions within the space and time to which they belong. I call these objects technical objects, and these are mainly artifacts made by human hands, such as mechanical tools. There are two reasons for being interested in these objects. First, artifacts made by human technology make up the visual landscape of modern society. For example, the forms of various buildings that make up the city become huge patterns and are reproduced as urban landscapes. Second, technical objects represent what is happening in the surrounding environment as technical indicators. Just as a specific symptom appears when a problem occurs in a part of the body, the object I see signally speaks to some problems in society and the environment. And the task of translating this indication into a photo-image is the artistic practice of photographic representation in this project. Here, the object gains a function called an ‘indicator’ through photographic representation, and at this time, the object becomes a sample and begins to talk about the time and space surrounding the object. The moment an object talks is when an unknown problem occurs in and out of the space and time to which it belongs. In this project, the audience will be able to connect objects and images in their own way by observing the forms of objects that are rarely recognized by the naked eye.

Photographs cannot capture the whole story of objects because of the unilateral nature of perspective and optical limitations. However, it can make objects ‘put in’ a specific situation, obscuring the visible part of objects, or uncovering what is invisible. In other words, you can make objects look different. The objects in this work are objects as visual materials reconstructed in my artistic practice. The numerous details these materials collect and create make you think about the story behind the object as a photographic image. This story will serve as a catalyst for the inevitable connection that the form of objects has with technology, environment, society, and culture, and to look back on the time and space surrounding us. In <Symptoms>, the objects that each photo-image reproduces are waiting to be reduced to various stories.