KIM DONG-YOO (Korean, B. 1965)

Using straight forward rendering of portraiture and an inventive technique, Kim Dong Yoo probes economic sociology by connecting past and present cultural references in an overall aesthetic fused with high and low art characteristics. His paintings defy the urge to visually apprehend everything at once. Instead, each composition is composed of elemental pixelated grid images, each of which is a microcosm existing in its own right yet interacting with the overall impression conjured up by the organic conglomeration of each unit. In Marilyn Monroe VS Mao Zedong (Lot 162), Kim formed a formula of constructing a diagrammatic format with multiple microscopic portrait of Mao Zedong, harmonized with coy control of tonal gradient to emit a larger final portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong represents the polar edge of Capitalism and Socialism. Kim consumed their most famous headshot as the subject motif to devise playful riddles on their relation to mass culture. He demonstrates that illusion of sight has its interesting values by rejecting to confine vision as something singularly related to the mechanism of the eye, uttering that there are narratives that we cannot discern physiologically and psychologically.