Images between reality and non-reality > visually parallel universe BY YEONJU SUNG

Series of Wearable Food works have been started with a discovery of an unexpected character of food ingredients. Ingredients seen from a different perspective are reconstructed and reassembled, and become a part of 'clothes' objet, which has a total different character and form. The moment of the transformation that is also a boundary of real and non-real, is captured as one peaceful photograph. 

This visually equal and parallel scene holds the mixture of reality (the raw, the original image file) and the modified image (modification made before and after printing) that becomes another real existence by being mixed up with the real food ingredients. Then the thing becomes a Photoshop file to become a final image of photograph that is a visually peaceful image, a ‘visually parallel universe.'   

However, the parallel character of the reborn image can only be held visually. Inside the flat image of photograph, a various characters, forms of elements get along together subtly, or gently clash and coexist. Although each content maintains its own trait, their identity is not achieved and they exist for other contents. They look as if they coexist, but they are just floating together.

In between of unlimited duplication and transformation, reality and non-reality, there is an ambiguous play that shows us the unstable and inadequate conscience of contemporary people who live in this visual-centered environment where they consume images lightly.

When these works were uploaded on a foreign photography website, they were fast-spread by numerous bloggers and design websites simultaneously. Thankfully, people appreciated them as 'real clothes,' resulting my works categorized under 'Fashion/Design' menu. In this era, the more shocking, the better the image is recognized. And the modifier 'creative' is a must-have-item when the images are uploaded on the internet. People are living in a world where asking 'how does it look' is more important than asking 'what is this.' And although there have been critical perspectives worrying about this kind of visual environment, the conflict is not my main interest.

My question is, in this visual-centered epoch, what do we realize as the real, and what would be the standard of that judgement? Hemmed in between a great many images made through many different stages and processes, the images are a mixture of reality and non-reality. Inside the changing time and environment of this era, I wanted to reveal the people's flabby conscience.