Youngho Kang: 99 Variations

Investigating the self through ‘alchemy’* using cameras and mirrors.

I move in the mirror, the constant reflection of time,
The camera stops me in the space of photography.
Another coexistence of me running away into the mirror and trying to confine myself in a photograph.

I am automatically reincarnated through the mirror and the photograph; I am purposefully suspended animation.
Time passing in the mirror transforms and disappears like the unconscious.
The space confined in the photograph appears returned to consciousness.
Thus, the mirror creates a myth that disappears, but exists,
Photos make visible but dead history.

Mirror and photography, time and space, consciousness and unconsciousness, myth and history.
These contradictions coexist and collide with each other.
Tombs of the living gods, Heroes who cultivate the sea, a shaman on the edge, solitude together, Fear not to be misunderstood.

99 Variations is an oxymoronic self-portrait created by dismantled selves.

*alchemy - The act of producing an infinitely transforming photo of myself by facing the camera and mirror