Yaloo has been recognized for exploring voluptuous, alluring aesthetics and reinterpreting repeating daily images into something magical and whimsical. She focuses on delicate tensions between the obvious opposites such as objectivity and subjectivity, superficial and metaphysical, fast and slow, active and passive, western and eastern, or extraordinary and ordinary and more. Rather than finding the middle ground for these polarized stereotypical notions, she instinctively goes to the extreme level of expression on both sides but is still able to embrace the characteristic of both ends at the same time, which almost makes everything seem elaborately calculated. But the true inspiration in her work does not lie in the logical, linguistical approach but in sensuous and rhythmic visual delight.

With this new series of work, Magic Wand For Your Mind, Yaloopop blurs the boundary between these opposites even further by excessively pushing the limits. The idea of magic wand is intriguingly complicated in contemporary Korean culture. Two different context of magic wand, the traditional fantastic wand for transformation and cheering tool for Korean Pop music scene, is fused into one idiosyncratic Magic Wand. The subject, who used to shake the wand to reveal the secret identity of its own, now has become someone who changes an objective person, a beloved pop star, into something else. The see-er and the seen have practically changed their roles in who actually actively transforms the world in perceptual sense.

Yaloo uses Korean pop culture and Korean style Pop Art imagery to talk about the identity of a Korean living abroad. Instead of suggesting outdated criticism or unilateral longing of homesickness, she leads her emotions to a vestibule to a fantastic space of virtually created YalooPop World. Her way of expression is confusing, fancy, busy, ludicrous, and abundant. But in that, she surely uses her own laws of order with a pungent insight to show a side of this world in one of the most original and personal dialogue.

It is highly recommended for audiences to find how many different oppositions are circularly in interchange while being fully absorbed in her rapturous visual ecstasy.

TEXT l Hounyeh Kim, Gallery Jungdabang Project, Seoul, Korea