Performance Details
Date : October 29, 2014
Place : National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea(MMCA)
Artist's statement for the performance
Art is to me a passionate effort that only I alone can master. When it comes to art, I realized thateven during my days as a commercial photographer, there was something that distinguished me from other commercial photographers. During my shoots I would be playing loud music and be directing my models through shouting and dancing with them. This made me different, different to the extent that I gained the nickname "the Dancing Photographer". Creating images is one thing I do best, but it is that skill combined with my dancing that truly makes me unalike any other photographer.
When giving my performance, I become both the photographer as well as the actor, on one stage. Because I seek to express both of these sides, I make use of a mirror, through which I can have both sides displayed simultaneously. After which I am able to find my true identity as an artist.
2009 I had my first exhibition, , during the working process of creating the images for this exhibition I had, through staying true to my identity as an artist, made use of my camera as well as my mirror. During the same exhibition I also made a shorter performance, showing the process which covered how some of the images displayed there came to be.
The number 99 means to me, "Almost", it also means the images are to amount to 99 pieces, which would be 99% of me, and for the final percent to be contributed, it is my own physical appearance. In an attempt to display 100% of me, as close to the real me as possible, I also show the performance.
In that first exhibition of mine I exhibited 49 images, which is 50% of my total goal. In the beginning, all of my works were centered on me altering myself in various ways, be so by make-up or more physical alterations such as diets. However, in the most recent of my works I have extended my thought about changing my figure through placing another subject in the frame, at this point the other subject is not just a mere subject, but it is a subject which houses both themselves as well as me. We absorb each other, becoming one being, one subject.
The first pieces of my works were very strong images, even sensitive at time. But as I proceed with my works, only the form of the mirror and the camera will remain while I myself become more and more subtle in the frame, becoming less visible over time. Only the subject that has us both absorbed will be visible.
As soon as the performance begins, I dance, I turn up the volume of the music and I display the images that are being taken, all at the very same time. I lose a fixed identification, the genre of my art disappears. The only thing I do is to showcase the passion of something that only I can do. Thiskind of effort is my art, where I am looking for a 100% of myself, perhaps this does not even exist, which could be likened to the scientific effort of human beings who seek immortality.
by Dancing Photographer Youngho Kang
