Yoon Ji Seon: Rag Face

The self-portraits in Rag Face begin with a photograph and then refuse to leave it alone. Yoon Ji Seon, born in Seoul in 1975, works across techniques that test how we look; here she prints her own face and sews into it, running rhythmic lines of quilting across the features altering their appearance. The stitches act like drawn marks, pulling the picture toward painting while keeping its evidence of a particular person. What returns the gaze is a face furrowed like an archaic mask, comic in one passage, nightmarish in the next, and it does not look away. The human image comes apart in the sewing and returns as something between person and thing.

The work is as much a matter of material and installation. Yoon sometimes incorporates traditional handmade paper that dissolves as soon as it meets water, so the connecting threads and the needle holes that once held a piece together come into view. In exhibitions she has suspended certain works so that front and back hang as a pair, making the reverse, normally hidden, part of the reading. The completed works retain visible traces of this material intervention.

The English-language volume, published by Hatje Cantz in May 2014, contains 160 pages and 130 photographs in a hardcover measuring 250 by 303 millimetres. It was edited by the ILWOO Foundation, Seoul, and designed by Kim Beirnaert, with texts by Suejin Shin and Young Min Moon. The publication reproduces work whose original surfaces combine photographic imagery with sewing and other material interventions.

For a collector, the interest lies in this intersection of photographic self-portraiture, textile techniques and handmade paper. Stitching changes the appearance of the artist’s face, while dissolution exposes threads and needle holes as part of the work’s construction. The book provides a publication devoted to these experiments, with photographic reproductions and credited writing. It is a specific example of how a portrait can be transformed through physical work on its surface, producing faces that move between recognition, humour and unease.

Yoon Ji Seon (*1975 in Seoul) avails herself of an array of techniques in her works while questioning the viewer’s fundamental visual habits. In her latest series, Rags Face, for instance, she adds sewing to her self-portraits, distorting her own face with rhythmic quilting stitches whose lines deliberately recall painting. Yoon Ji Seon suspends some of her works in the exhibition space so that the front and back form a pair. She occasionally integrates traditional, handmade paper that dissolves as soon as it comes into contact with water, making it possible to see the connecting threads and the holes made by sewing needles that originally held the piece together.
With her faces furrowed in this manner, reminiscent of archaic masks, the artist deconstructs the human appearance and creates chimeras—some humorous, some nightmarish—that gaze steadfastly at the viewer.
 

Edited by: ILWOO Foundation, Seoul
Designed by: Kim Beirnaert
Texts by: Suejin SHIN, Young Min Moon
English
May 2014, 160 Pages , 130 Photos
hardcover
250mm x 303mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-3785-2

Publisher page editorial text:
Yoon Ji Seon (*1975 in Seoul) avails herself of an array of techniques in her works while questioning the viewer’s fundamental visual habits. In her latest series, Rags Face, for instance, she adds sewing to her self-portraits, distorting her own face with rhythmic quilting stitches whose lines deliberately recall painting. Yoon Ji Seon suspends some of her works in the exhibition space so that the front and back form a pair. She occasionally integrates traditional, handmade paper that dissolves as soon as it comes into contact with water, making it possible to see the connecting threads and the holes made by sewing needles that originally held the piece together.
With her faces furrowed in this manner, reminiscent of archaic masks, the artist deconstructs the human appearance and creates chimeras—some humorous, some nightmarish—that gaze steadfastly at the viewer.

Publisher source ↗