Koo Bohnchang - Hysteric Nine

Koo Bohnchang
Hysteric Nine

Published by Rat Hole Gallery and Hysteric Glamour, 2003
Size: 26.1 x 22.8 cm
84 pages
Hardcover
First edition limited to 400 copies

Korean artist Koo Bohnchang's "Masks" series, published in issue 9 of the photobook series by Japanese fashion brand Hysteric Glamour, marks a departure in the artist's career. For the first time, Koo explores traditional Korean art and culture, photographing a series of inventive yet disturbing portraits of people wearing Korean "Tal" masks. Traditionally, men and women who wore these masks were able to pass freely between our world and the spirit world. These masks granted ordinary people a special power, transforming them into something else. In his photographs, the cultural significance of masks becomes another element Koo uses to create multi-layered compositions that play with surrealism, personality, expression, fear, and comedy.
The book includes a foreword by the artist and an essay by art critic Kotaro Iizawa (in Japanese and English).
"The overall fantasy atmosphere of the work and the feeling that the subjects have freed themselves from the yoke of gravity and are floating in the air rather testify to his individual sensibility as a photographer. Ultimately, we find that this series is a unique blend and fusion of recording and artistic expression, reality and illusion, tradition and contemporaneity."
- excerpt from Kotaro Iizawa's essay