Bae Joonsung was born in Gwangju, South Korea in 1967 and trained at the College of Fine Arts of Seoul National University in 2000. The work of Bae Joonsung artfully combines painting and photography, inviting the viewer to explore the relationship between the two art forms.
When one walks past Bae’s paintings, the female nude within each composition is unveiled behind an otherwise demure scene created with reference to old master paintings or museum settings. For Bae, the attraction of a still life lies not in its quiet, placid nature, but in the dynamic energy contained therein. He has said that he has always believed that when an artist paints, with his or her eyes caressing over the model, the final painting brings birth to ’another’ model entirely.
As such, his lenticular technique - which gives rise to the dynamic, changing nature of his work - blurs the line between the animate nature of his subject and the inanimate nature of the paintings that result, encouraging the viewer to rethink these distinctions. His work is an acknowledgement of what is happening when the artist views his subject; it speaks of the entire process of painting rather than just one singular moment. Each beginning with the title “The Costume of the Painter”, Bae plays with a literal understanding of this heightened period mood, wonderfully depicted, and at the same time signifies this additional cloak of meaning and artifice added through the creative invention of the artist.
