Hyun Mi Yoo (*1964 in Seoul) tells her stories through sculpture, painting, and video. Her initial focus as a sculpture major was on giving life to mundane objects. She observed how Rene Magritte chose and arranged objects, Giorgio De Chirico manipulated light, Edward Hopper brought out special qualities in the ordinary. Inspired by many masters, Yoo's work creates imaginary scenes with recombined fragments of reality, as occurs in dreams and stories. This book introduces a body of work that, beginning with sculptures and chemical processes, resulted in photography. The first stage consists of sculpting objects which are then installed in studio corners and oil-painted. Carefully chosen colors serve to remove the objects' original material properties. Brush-painted light effects that take the interaction between objects and space into consideration are then applied as a means of completing formal compositions. Finally, after an ideal angle of view has been chosen, the objects are photographed. The process mostly eliminates the need for digital manipulation.Exhibition schedule: Seoul, Ilwoo Foundation, opening May 20, 2013

Text by: Matthias Harder, Suejin Shin