We remember from his ongoing series on flowers how he metaphorically employed the dramatic stages of human lives. Through his lens, the flower opened up its typical definition as a token of love or beauty and extended its interpretation by alluding to the exciting birth, splendid blossom and the solemn finale of a life.
In the Korea Landscape exhibition we see images that are quintessentially Korean: an old man sitting in a park (Veteran's Park, Seoul, 2005-2010) or a rickshaw carrying all kinds of domestic goods (Namdaemun Market, Seoul, 2005-2010). The old men idling away their time in public parks is a classic headline for society section in papers reporting the growing number of elderly people neglected by their family and isolated from the society. The heavily loaded rickshaw is another typical image of the working class stricken with endless poverty. All these are the images that we readily consume without giving any second thoughts and keep them confined in their clichés.
Michael Wesely doubts what he sees in reality and re-visits the images through a new set of perspective and view. He abandons the conventional and established mind, sets and puts the images in a new setting. Here, the old man is no longer drowned in time but may well be defiantly leading his day and the pile of unsold goods in the rickshaw can be transformed into tropical delights. Our minds are ingrained with fixed perceptions and this confines our understanding of the world in a certain way. The world holds complex and rich meaning for us to unfold and we cannot possibly rely on one perception. Korea Landscape will surely offer a different, unfamiliar and alternative view on the Korean image and present ample renditions and interpretations that will contribute to further enrich our inner landscape.
Michael Wesely’s main groups of works known emerge from his ideas of the organization of the medium photography and components of the camera. In one big complex of his work Wesely uses a modified pinhole camera where he captures the images in reality and releases them from their inherent surroundings. Through this changed camera use landscape is portrayed in a horizontally collected manner, which makes details disappear showing the big form and the imagination of landscape as a color field. It is with this that the artist has portrayed the landscape of Korea while traveling the country for past five years.
The other big complex of Wesely's work deals with the use of exposure time as one of the parameters of the medium that was used to be considered only in a technical sense. In all these works the artist is using large format cameras with regular lenses. As Wesely is well known for his documentation of the three year renovation and expansion of the New York MOMA which was shown at the re-opening of the museum, he chronicles the vestige of time in a certain space. Along with the trail of the sun and mundane glimpses of streets unique scenes hide unexpected sights and pure coincidences. All which have been captured by light are often melted into unidentifiable images failing to give any hints to their intrinsic qualities. The faint visibility, however, amplifies. The ironic blindness offers a chance to open up other visions beyond our recognition and presents a pure sensation of a new experience - an encounter otherwise denied through habitual and fixed eyes.
One critic discovers the ‘presence of the absent in terms of the absence’ in Wesely’s work adding that it enables us to witness the ‘transitory visibility’ on things that no longer exists before our eyes. The artist defies the fixed notion of the existence based on visibility. He eagerly tries to step outside the boundaries of the human sensory and experience and grabs the essence of existence that no photo-realism can depict. This curiosity and determination on trying to dig ‘what is out there’ allows fresh meanings and colors to the many images that are deflated to mere symbols and signs.
