Wild Boar Head 2 - 2007, used tire, steel, wood, styrofoam - Gana Art GalleryJi Yong-Ho is a South Korean artist who sculpts larger than life animals out of recycled rubber tyres. His studio is filled with hyenas, horses, felines and menacing ram's heads. "My concept is mutation - mutants" he exlpains. The futuristic beasts have earned him a prestigious artists residency and live-in studio through the Gana Art Gallery. To Ji, rubber symbolises mutation as "The product is from nature", from the white sap of latex trees. "But here it has changed. The colour is black. And the look is scary". "Rubber is very flexible, like skin, like muscles". It gives him more freedom to capture the expressivity of the animals, representing for example; the horses wistful glance or the way inwhich the hyena cocks its hind leg.
Ho's concept of mutants grew out of his l8ife in Seoul, where there is fierce political debate over genetic engineering. During school, he studied Darwinism and was immediately glavanised by how his theory of evolution applied to man's manipulation with nature. Already, he says, cats and dogs are bred to emphasize their domesticated traits and downplay their wild sides. The sculptures can be taken as warnings; if we're nto careful, we may soon lose the ability to see animals in their natural state altogether!
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