A visual within a visual, the alienated silhouettes that photographer BAKi orchestrates produces optical illusions which put a pause on the dancers’ extensive bodily movements.
Instead of using blurs and fabrics to express dance, his photographs reenact the aesthetics of the action with dynamic precision, pulling out a different sense of essence from the art form that, nevertheless, still upholds a surprisingly high level of energy.
As a previous soloist in the National Ballet of Korea, BAKi renders an instant within a landscape where “each gesture’s modulations and polarities creates a character which the artist enhances in his studio through a rigorous command of the set-up” – as seen in his series of “Shadow” below. Stripping bodies away from emotions, he treats them as “malleable and sensory medium instinctively comprehended by an imagination inherent to both a personal as well as a collective history“. Unfolding the bodies into wave-like or bamboo-like outlines, his geometric interludes which he has vigorously mapped out transforms tutus into flower petals and bodies into a unique pictorial language, making his works a truly exquisite merge between movement and scenery under the expression of photography.
See his works up close now at opiom Gallery.
