Kwang Mo’s Space in the Glass

In Seoul, photographer Kwang Mo's third Solo exhibition 'Kwang Mo-Space in the Glass' has opened. Kwang Mo was already known online as a fantasy artist, and I was also grabbed by the feeling of dreams and phantasm as soon as I came across his work. However, according to the artist himself, it was not by intention that he took a 'fantasy photograph' by adding fantastic factors. He says 'It's just that I try to view the world as a fantasy'. At the beginning of his work carrier, he says that he first took pictures of whatever subject matters grabbed his attention, and as he decided on what to work with, he reflected his thoughts and emotions. It was while he was working like this that he felt that the most important factors in the artist's work, artistic perspective and imagination, were being buried during the post revising work with a computer.

So, after his early stage in his carrier, he takes photographs after planning and setting all the situations. This way, his works contain an interesting feature of a photograph medium, contingency, and hence holds a more deep and soft feelings. If you look through Kwang Mo's world of works, the most conspicuous characteristic is that it is of single color with an addition of light pastel tone. Especially, the main colour of this exhibition 'Space of Glass' is an odd blue. It's not a topaz blue, nor an aqua blue. This blue tone that he expresses, is the color of desert that's seen for a short instant when the dry desert's sand collide with the wind. Like this, he shows the middle of somewhere which is not the space that faces the reality, nor an imaginary space in a fantasy.

This spatiality and a silhouette that's not clear, nor vague, and the impression of color that can't really be given a clear name to, all act as the intermediate for here and there, reality and fantasy, stranger and I, inside and outside etc. As well as the characteristic that he has, to explore the mid-way point in the view of an artist, his work as an art director for a TV documentary program must have increased his curiosity for the uncivilized, remote areas rather than the famous regions. When we visit the places that he has been to such as Turfan, a region in the west of China, and Tunisia, we would encounter these third world countries with a prejudice of our need to help the uncivilized country as the citizens of a developed country.

However, their civilization that he encountered once he arrived there was surprisingly powerful and sturdy. How did the prejudice about the world we were not used to nor ever seen come about? He came back with the question about why the outsiders drew out a conclusion as they pleased from what they saw and imagined. The more he thought about it, he became more curious and was led back there. He says that he chose desert again because all of humankind live in the same reality, yet he could still sense the fundamental solitude of each person living in a separate world, so he left to get away from that loneliness. May be the artist wanted to find the surreal apace away from the reality's individualism.

'It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.' The fox to Le Petit Prince in <Le Petit Prince>It is noticeable that in this exhibition, there are two photographs of the same scenes. One is the photograph of the native people who actually live there that he took when he returned after his primary experience of the remote area. The other is a carefully calculated and produced photograph that he took with movie equipments and actors to create the atmosphere suitable to the remote area. Some shots may make the remote village seem more like a movie scene, or other shots may make the produced remote village seem more like a movie scene. The artist asked the spectators which shots of the produced and not produced scenes make the civilization seem more powerful and which one looked more like the reality.

His photographs have a silent gripping force. The trivial subjects, and not so powerful color senses still make the audience take a step forward for a closer look. 'I don't work to give out a message to the audience. I just express what I want to see, ' the artist says. His experiences all immediately appear in his works. He is not an artist who would settle at his place. He is an artist of behaviorism. The actions that he take and his contemplations all expand as all of our problem. Therefore, we, the spectators just need to look through the eyes of the artist Kwang Mo and feel with the heart as we become the little prince and travel to another star. The suspicion towards the human civilization hidden in his sensitive and witty work, and the deeply rooted solitude that all of the modern people feel, are expressed through various subject matters and this makes the spectators ponder upon the relationship between us and the reality surrounding us.