optical illusion installation

There is more than one way to frame a work of art. In this instance, an entire room is required to capture the reflected beauty of these hovering half-furnishings.

Continue reading below
Our Featured Videos

Kyung Woo Han has a fascinating habit of using ordinary objects and conventional spaces as backdrops and props for rethinking the way we interact with furniture, interiors and homes. Familiar shapes are made strange when cut and spliced back together, including tables, chairs, desks and picture frames.

Kyung Woo Han green room

This ‘Green Room’ optical illusion is no exception – what appears to be a still watery surface is just a transparent film, while the mirrored objects are in fact doubled up, the same on both sides, contrary to what our mind first tells us.

The white-painted walls, doors, ceiling, floor and series of suspended objects are all colored lightly blue (by a layer below the horizon line stretched across the center, flat and under eye level) – this move slices the space in two, and makes it seem like the lower portion rests underwater.

Kyung Woo Han green room optical illusion

Of this piece, the designer says, “All the facts are relevant. People see what they want to see. One fact can be interpreted in several ways depend on our perceptions. In the opposite, two different facts can be looked the same. My work deals with perception and illusions. Everything we see or what we know is not absolute. I suggest various ways to perceive things with slightly different perspectives.

Here’s his bio, via Gazelli Art House:

“Kyung Woo Han is a multidisciplinary artist who employs sculpture, installation and multi-channel video to make highly sophisticated works which master optical illusion and create a sense of wonder and bewilderment in the viewer.”

Kyung Woo Han green room from above

“Han has an MFA in Film, Video and New Media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and graduated from Seoul National University with a BFA in sculpture. He won a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and NYFA fellowship in 2010, and was chosen for Smack Mellon Hot Picks aswell as the artist residency program at Yaddo in 2009. Han was selected as: an AIM artist at the Bronx Museum in 2008, a Swing space artist at LMCC, an AHL foundation visual arts winner in 2007, and an Asian Cultural Council Rockefeller Brothers Fund grantee in 2006. Han’s work has been exhibited widely in New York, Chicago, and South Korea. His work has been shown at Dean Project, NY studio gallery, White Box, Bronx Museum, Smith College Museum, Gallery Two, LG space, Gallery Loop Korea, Seoul Arts Center and GANA Art Center in Seoul Korea. His works are included in the collections of the National Contemporary Museum of Art Korea”