Bohyun Yoon has created an experience design in the chic art gallery in the Barclay Building, every surface of the gallery is activated with a confounding display of intellectual design, superb craftsmanship, historical references and anthropomorphic symbolism vibrating in unison like a strum on a guitar. Every nuance is considered as the exploded little bodies, each element hand crafted from custom molds, coalesce as shadows of babies cast by a single bright white light bulb on the walls. But, when the light bulb begins making a circular motion, the tiny doll parts swinging with air movement, the whole room suddenly becomes a dream scape of dancing babies, inducing a startling sensation of floating.
On the right is the artist, Bohyun Yoon. Yoon decided to create each doll part mold because he didn’t want to violate copyrights, he told DoN the process took more than 5 months. Each carefully crafted element of the installation is suspended in a way that the sum of the parts creates a whole experience design, Yoon told DoN he wished to,”…create a dialog not a monolog.”
Yoon created these mirror masks to help him learn English by seeing all parts of the face he was listening to; the face recognition technology in DoN‘s camera went wacko. Bohyun Yoon is an art professor at Tyler, is a glass artist (the water filled glass bowl hat and accompanying video is idiosyncratic to the extreme), a video artist and photographer; Amie Potsic explained to DoN that Bohyun Yoon, “is smart and resourceful in his use of materials.”
Buhyun Yoon, Reforming, 9 channel video with sound, 4 minutes, dimensions variable @ Center for Emerging Visual Artists in the Barclay Building on Philadelphia’s beautiful Rittenhouse Square. This Friday, 4/15/11, is the Center City District art crawl, the perfect opportunity to experience Bohyun Yoon: Embody.
Photos by DoN.