Korean artist works in bicycle chain + video

A gallery in Seoul, Korea is showing the work of Yeong-Deok Seo; an artist who represents the human body in bicycle chain.

Yeong-Deok Seo graduated from the department of Environmental Sculpture at the University of Seoul in 2010 but has already exhibited all over South Korea's capital since 2008 when he won the Grand Prize at the National Undergraduate and Graduate Students Sculpture Competition.

He depicts human bodies, either whole or in part, and always in welded bike chain which he painstakingly builds and finishes himself. Based on photos of his work, bicycle chain is his preferred medium which in some works appears polished as if freshly oiled and ready for a ride and in others corroded and melted with that distinctive powdery red rust finish that strikes despair into a cyclists' soul.

According to Tcheon-Nahm Park, Curator of the Sungkok Art Museum, one of Seo's previous exhibitors, "Yeong-Deok Seo plainly satirizes, through depiction of the human body, the social reality that firmly sticks to the inside of social system or falls apart from it. It is chain which he chooses to describe the phenomenon and reality intertwined and wriggling so as to live through and to bear each other.

"Fragments of chains are fixed with pins. Every two of them are connected with sharing one pin. The fragments, stirring, tell us various stories with vivid expressions and shine differently depending on the angle at which light hits them."

Details: Yeong-Deok Seo blog