Beomsik Won - Archisculpture

Won Beomsik, Ilwoo Foundation Staff, Suejin Shin

The dome gets taller and taller, one balustrade spans the next—yet this spectacular tower was never built; it is merely the result of the collage technique applied by the South Korean artist Won Beomsik (*1972): the series initially begun in London assembles and combines details from photographs of buildings by a variety of architects. A deconstruction of the urban landscape that allows new arrangements and connotations, and tells unexpected stories. Archisculpture plays with cultural conventions and blind spots: while Won’s exaggerated, exotic tower pagoda seems realistic to the Western eye, we quickly detect the expressive artificiality of a bold construction consisting of a storefront with a Baroque dome. According to the artist, his fragile structures deliberately provoke alarm, a stab in the sense of a Barthesian punctum.