Artist Research -- Jinyoung Yu

``My creations represent those who have chosen a life apart from others, as if they are invisible or non-existent beings.  Instead of adapting themselves to human society, they enter into their own personal space, avoiding others interruptions.``

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Jinyoung Yu is a 32 year old Korean artist who, at current, does the majority of her work in sculptural medium.  Her work struggles with a few key ideas including the isolation that occurs due to the break down of communication that we are experiencing within our culture as well as the actual state of being an invisible or transparent individual.  Both of these ideas are expressed poignantly in her work, especially in the faces of her sculptures which are created with a self-realized PVC recipe and clay.  Yu was actually featured in the same issue of Hi-Fructose as Michael Hussar and in her interview, I found this paragraph to be a good summation of her work:

So how does one make sense of it all? Is it better to shout and carry on or to hide in the corner, feigning weak smiles? Is wearing your heart on your sleeve any better than putting on a mask? As in any intellectual debate about identity, conformity or individualism, it's hard to make a shatter-proof argument one way or the other.  All I know is that when I look at one of Jinyoung Yu's invisible people, they look familiar to me. I understand. I understand because I know them as myself.  Jinyoung's work is for the loner in all of us, for those outside of the world; those who find their comfort inside their own private sphere yet long to show their true self; a self free of lies and fraudulent affectation.  As stunning as the work may be and as dedicated an artist as she is, the true aim of Jinyoung's invisible people lies in the instinctual pursuit to find and celebrate the sincere individual lurking inside each of us.

I find that much of this is what I'm trying to achieve in my own work, a communication, a deep seeded understanding of self that lies in another person or figure.  My struggle, though, is going to be this: How do I achieve this intimacy without the use of an entire face? I'm noticing in my reshoots and that most of the imagery that I'm creating anew that the face is becoming smaller and smaller in the frame, if it is even in the frame at all.  This is interesting to me because generally the face is a large part of my image and it always has been I think. It is the hub of emotion, but I think in studying body language, I can get the same kind of raw energy that is shown in these faces made of lifeless clay.

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All of these pieces are either from Abundant Emptiness or A Family in Disguise. Because she is a foreign artist and many of her pieces bear similar qualities, it was difficult to decipher which pieces belonged to which series because of the language barrier and her general state of unknown in the US.

Jinyoung's Website