Oh Mikyung’s series of artwork takes an example of advertisement. Modern society has moved from the production age controlled by the industrial capitalism to the age of code and information, which models, codes, media, and cybernetics dominate. Oversupply of the products produced by mechanization required the people who would consume them. Hence, the industrial society has put more values to luxury and pleasure than diligence and frugality. The society became consumption-oriented, and the people would like to evaluate their values of existence through the consumption.

In the consumption-orientied society with the overflowing advertisement and media, codes and images exceed their entities. This is the myth of the modern society. Mikyung’s work throws a question in the process of realizing the enetity in this society. What are the differences among Mt. Inwangs that exist in the Jeong Seon’s painting, the real world, and my work ? Mikyung’s works deal with the questions in relation to an object and the code, and a real object and the model that realizes the object.

Mikyung’s series was created from the composite model that fictionalizes an object as if it was nonentity. The work deals with one characteristic of the current capitalism society that the codes and images are overflowing. Mikyung synthesized the images cut from newspapers and magazines with the well-known Eastern landscape painting.

What does this series of artworks and advertisement have in common is that they give us the illusion that we can realize our happiness. However, the painting by Jeong Seon and Mikyung’s artworks explored the differences of the original landscape that contains the myth of the fine art vanishes as Walter Benjamin has referred in the art of technology reproduction. It takes meaninglessness and cynical humor as its characteristics. These are also often referred to be the contemporary aesthetics. This idea is borrowed from What Umberto Eco says, “Art is to produce the aesthetic effect”.

While the codes hidden in the advertisement are the global ones that any country in the world can share, Mikyung’s work contains the aspects of the Eastern cultures and emotions by selecting the Eastern landscape painting as its background. The images cut from the various advertisements, newspapers, and game magazines, which represent the desire may conflict with the traditional landscape background but they also become harmonious with each other. The nature in the does not only represent the reminiscence about the past but also represent the contemporary city.

In the world without meaning resulted from the overflowing images, the takes the form of disappearance rather than production and creation. In other words, it deals with the form without meaning in the controlled system such as programming and information system. This nihilism or fictitiousness is realized as a circle in Mikyung’s work. Meaning is the hidden dimension. It may not be visible but requires the stable and clear foundation. However, in the unstable society that everything is visible, transparent, unstable, and obscene, those meanings disperse and explode such as illusion and bubbles.

About the Artist:
Oh Mikyung studied Oriental Painting and Arts theory at Ewha Women's University and Hongik University of Korea. She has been invited to show her works at 13 solo exhibitions and 25 group shows in Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and France. Mikyung’s works are collected throughout Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Mexico and France.