Han, Hyo-Seok deals with the duality of human beings and the dilemma of an individual in a group as his subject matters in the most provocative way. The shocking hyper-realistic images of his paintings and installation works double the impact, leading the audience to think more positively about the intention of the artist.

The cast human head with two faces is put on top of a pillar and the half-animal and half-human figures are placed on the floor, allowing viewers to become a more involved part of the works. The initial shock that the viewers might experience when looking at the presented pieces for the first time diminishes as they realize in real time that the objects presented are not representing real figures despite their reality in form. At the same time, they, however, are keenly aware of the presence of these seemingly fictitious figures. This paradoxical situation confronts the viewers with 'the grotesque,' and both challenges and confuses them with the reality and images they face. The objects are real and unreal, something not easily understood in a conventional way of thinking. In this course, they are given a chance to reflect upon all the flowery words of humans and the nature of human beings.

In Han’s paintings, the images of the human face overlapped with the flesh that one can see at a butcher's shop suggest the true nature of human beings beneath their skin. This work symbolizes the masks they wear in social situations as well as the pretense and duality of human beings, refuting the modernistic proposition that a man is a rational being and revealing in the truth that humans share a common property with beasts. The duality in his works has so far been interpreted through binary relations such as reason versus anti-reason and consciousness versus unconsciousness.

One, however, can also find socio-political connotations of the duality in this exhibition. High on the column is a human head with two faces: one with his eyes open and the other closed. This piece signifies the duality of someone admired by many. The artist uses the term 'political correctness' to explain this work titled as <We are cursed to think>. This piece portrays a situation in which something unethical can be deemed virtuous for the sake of the group to which one belongs. It conveys the duality that one person has and at the same time shows the limitations he or she has within in a greater group of power.

Sometimes, the price that individuals have to pay for the good of the group and its power requires more than just wearing masks or having two faces. Sometimes it can require a much greater sacrifice than that. Nameless individuals deprived of any significant power on their own have to sacrifice themselves in some instances, much like a slaughtered pig, for the group itself or more often than not for those who hold the power within the group. The work <Equilibrium of Inequality> explicitly addresses this issue. The term 'equilibrium of inequality’is used in the realm of economics to indicate a state in which a few in the ruling class try to maintain the status quo of social inequality even at the expense and sacrifices of many while the many are not even aware that this is happening. Such a phenomenon is often witnessed in the relationships between companies and consumers in a capitalist society and among different races within a society.
In particular, the same can be detected not only in the international relationship between a superpower and other nations, but also among the constituents of the superpower itself. As shown in America's invasion of Iraq, some of the U. S. soldiers, obviously pawns of the superpower, also fall a sacrifice of the war for the perceived greater interests of the nation. The interests of a group, in this case of a country, are disguised with some big words like democracy, freedom, and world peace. Born and brought up in the city of Pyeongtaek, Korea, which has the largest U. S. army base in the world outside the U. S, the artist depicts the sacrifice and fate of anonymous individual soldiers.

The two works above express the artist's views on society, his sympathy for the weak, and his wish to resolve social inequality. In this respect, Han, Hyo-Seok's shocking images share the characteristics of the 'grotesque,' which Mikhail Bakhtin defined as the culture of the suppressed. As a Korean philosopher Jung, Moojung pointed out in his essay on the artist's most recent exhibition, the notion of 'grotesque' is related to that of 'Ugliness,' a binary counterpart of the notion of Beauty in Western aesthetics. Theodore W. Adorno regarded 'the beauty' as an elite-centered, oppressing category whereas he endowed 'the ugly' with a moralistic and humanistic mission to restore humanity by resolving social inequality and restoring sympathy for the underdogs. It is this moralistic humanism that underlies the shocking images of Han, Hyo- Seok’s works.

Won, Yungtae (Art Critic)