REAL DMZ PROJECT
REAL DMZ Project was a group exhibition held at various locations along a small stretch of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea during the summer of 2012 – I scumbled thin layers of acrylic paint over flat monochromatic two-tone renderings of old photographs. Then I painted a line from well-known children's song on top in high-relief- in one painting it is in English and in the other, Korean. The text and images refer to the location where the works were exhibited – an abandoned railway station next to the DMZ which once took passengers north to the beautiful Geumgang (or Diamond) Mountains. I wanted to evoke a memory or bring back something that had been buried.

In Edgemen I sampled from Google Image four images of border guards - two North Korean and two South - putting them through a regime of distortions on my computer: stretching into quasi-anamorphosis (vertically, rather than horizontally), reducing to two-tone contrast, then printing them on narrow vinyl banners and hanging them on the façade of the monorail terminal of the Peace Pavilion at the DMZ. For this project I could work big and outside. I wanted to allude to East Asian hanging scrolls, but also to the aesthetics of monumental political banners, and also to advertising (which is the context within which the printing technique and materials are mostly used). I also made the decision in this case to remove the signs of my own handwork through printing the images directly from the digital.