FETISHRAMA PART2

Jun, Se Young (Pyo Gallery south)

Do, Byung Kyu’s art works art are based on the use of plastic dolls, revealing a new metaphor for a hidden psychology of a human being.

Both in the West and East, dolls have been used as the symbol of human beings in magical rituals to bring happiness, prevent the plague or bad luck, or pray for abundant harvests. This practice is in line with animism, ancient totemic faith, originating from the old belief that human wishes are realized through dolls.

In modern times, the meaning of dolls has changed from the material for magical rituals to toys. However, it is still used as a classical charm and another new ego to substitute for people’s emotions and bring a psychological comfort to people.

The dolls used in Do, Byung Kyu’s art works play a similar role. They metaphorically reveal the author’s fetish desire and inner desire in the subconscious, and dramatically exhibit the imagination along with the emotional memories of his childhood and adolescent period on the aluminum panel. Fetishrama (fetish+drama) representing a dramatic construction through the medium of dolls can be seen as an imaginative play with dolls.

In this exhibition, Do, Byung Kyu’s art works tell the story about life and death in such fetishrama.

In “Ocean without a shore”, subtle human emotions revealed in the faces of the dolls and sticky mucus covering their surface express all such things in detail. In other works such as “Fifteen Babies” and “Seventeen Babies”, the numbers become symbolic factors representing the fragmented selves and further the suppression of modern people’s desire and their anxiety.

Do, Byung Kyu’s dramatic story, which indirectly reveals human’s inner desire in the subconscious and social desire through the dolls which can have eternal life ironically without life, will provide an audience with the new riddles of the modern art and the unique answers.