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Myung Keun Koh’s Photo Sculptures Play With Perception

Sculpting small-scale worlds is all in a day’s work for Korean artist Myung Keun Koh. The Pratt Institute graduate’s oeuvre consists of photographic laminates delicately pieced together in three-dimensional forms - boxes that sometimes convey little buildings, cityscapes and classical nudes that glow with luminescent light from within. Koh prints his images on transparent film and then laminates those images, melting them together to form his sculptures. Viewed from different angles, the printed images on these boxes shimmer fluidly, the result of careful abstract arrangement. With the medium of photography, he captures a single moment — but when the photos are layered into boxes, the moment becomes alive again.

Sculpting small-scale worlds is all in a day’s work for Korean artist Myung Keun Koh. The Pratt Institute graduate’s oeuvre consists of photographic laminates delicately pieced together in three-dimensional forms – boxes that sometimes convey little buildings, cityscapes and classical nudes that glow with luminescent light from within. Koh prints his images on transparent film and then laminates those images, melting them together to form his sculptures. Viewed from different angles, the printed images on these boxes shimmer fluidly, the result of careful abstract arrangement. With the medium of photography, he captures a single moment — but when the photos are layered into boxes, the moment becomes alive again.

As three-dimensional objects, the boxes stand as a reference to classical forms of sculpture, but are revolutionised in their evolution away from the fixed, dense volume of marble. Koh’s inspiration is mainly drawn from archaic architecture, representation of the human body and identities.

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