Gana Art to show Ji Yong-ho’s ‘New Mutant’ series made with 3D printing

Gana Art, a major commercial art gallery in Korea, will host the solo exhibition of sculptor Ji Yong-ho, who is widely known for his “Mutant” series of giant animal sculptures made from abandoned tires. The upcoming exhibition aims to show how his mutant series has developed with the use of new techniques and different materials.

With the “New Mutant” series Ji’s previous mutants have been turned into new mutant sculptures reproduced with 3D modeling techniques. The 3D printing techniques allowed the artist to give variations to his existing sculptures, not only as far as colors and textures, but also with a combination of two different mutant sculptures.

Some of the new mutants are made from bronze or aluminum instead of tires that the artist used for his previous mutant series.

Ji created the mutant series using rubber tires for the past 17 years, expressing humans’ hidden dual characters while criticizing the distortion of modern society due to mankind‘s selfish actions and destructiveness.

Using tires and iron structures, Ji made sculptures of nine animal series, including carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, fish and hybrid animals, which look real due to their size and the artist’s deft manipulation of the tires.

The artist adopted 3D printing techniques after agonizing over how to move on from traditional sculptural works.

“I realized that my mutant series was nearing the end after more than 10 years of production,” the artist said in a statement about his exhibition. “I began to think about how I could achieve new sculpture models based on what I had developed so far. And the 3D modeling techniques allowed me to produce the new mutant series with a variety of variations, from colors to the shapes of the sculptures.”

“I want to explore new ways of producing sculptures maintaining the originality of the mutant series,” he said.

“New Mutant” at Gana Art in Jongno, central Seoul, opens Friday and runs through Sept. 13. The art gallery will limit the number of visitors to 10 for each tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)