고상우 개인전

I Love you

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
KOH: I Love you
October 12 - November 11, 2006
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 12, 6-8pm
2x13 Gallery, Chelsea, New York City
531 West 26th Street 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001
www.2x13gallery.com

2x13 gallery proudly presents the shows of Koh: I Love you. Exhibitions will be on view from October 12th to November 11th, with an opening reception on Thursday, October 12, 2006.

Korean-born New York based artist Koh will show his unique color negatives, which result through an inversion in his medium of photography. As a young artist educated in the US, he has proven to the public how to reverberate his "multi-dimensional Identity".

Koh's images come from the actual photo shoots. Koh places his model onto roses, leaves or other objects, and then paints them with different colors so that they become the colors he creates in the reverse mode. Then he makes his model perform and captures that moment in the photograph. He does not use any other digital effect. Every step of this process is prepared by his hand in position-mode right before it turns into the negative color. Throughout the process, Koh not only inverts the colors of his images but also inverts male and female roles, eastern and western cultures, reality and fantasy. He often uses himself as a model, posing in front of the camera as a western female, and thus represents those inversions he creates. Koh is not just there to produce the artwork as the artist, but he himself is becoming the object, which is put through total inversion during this art making process. These inversions include all the gender effects, such as clothing, gesture, make-up, and hairstyle as if to compliment the process of self-transformation by being altered himself.

Koh's recent works for this exhibition show the romantic side of his works, often proposing a gesture of "Love". But if everything is based on the altered and virtual scenarios that he claims, the audience will also see the multi-dimensional attribute of "love" that Koh showcases. Through his anti-traditional and vibrant photography, layers of complex inversions of symbolic elements play a game of love in Koh's world of photography.