Chic Rocks MUN-GI YANG

As the basis of civilization, stone is the material firstly used in the constructions which mark the most remarkable and greatest civilizations. For Mun-gi Yang, a Korean artist, this material’s cosmological range is transformed by sculptor’s hands. The stone, in different forms, confronts itself with our gaze for giving new meanings. It was made over with its own identity by being shaped in the form of bag, and being smoothed and engraved as jewelry. For him, a bag, or precisely a handbag, allows the owner to construct an image with witch he could prove his identity, through what the bag contains and also its external appearance.

Mun-gi Yang also wants to question the history and our connection with time. From a luxury bag carved on the stone to a prehistoric bag, artist stains the humankind's’ place with eternity over time. Modern or ancient, rustic or carved, Mun-gi Yang’s work is as much fascinating as astonishing.

His work “Chic Rocks” perfectly embodies this connection with time in a sense of humour, about the relationship between human and object.
Stone, rope and wood, three natural materials are indispensable for the changing of human condition; and are transformed into bag here, different bundles in which the sense of belongings and the sense of existence for everyone assemble. The primitive link with nature and the “prehistoric” form of object are mixed up by carving the motifs on the surface. By printing stamps and coat of arms, these symbols of an universal consumption aesthetic immerse us in a world of chic and fashion.
Through this series of 120 editions, Mun-gi Yang interrogates hence the object and the luxe. For possessing or sharing, immutable as well fragile, this work provokes our envy and imagination, so Chic…, so Rock.

ARTIST

Mun-Gi Yang was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. He graduated from Fine Arts at Chosun University.

In 2012, the artist-sculptor presented Story of LUXURY STONE at the Okgwa Museum of Art, South Korea. This exhibition revealed the particular attention he pays to the meaning and symbolism of the luxury bag by exploiting the aesthetic potential of stone. In this exhibition, 45 works proposed to question the nature of the object and the human being and the structure of social mechanisms in the elaboration of contemporary desires. These Luxury stones, although initially appearing as parodic works on Chinese counterfeit bags from major brands such as Louis Vuitton or Chanel, go far beyond a simple imitation or representation of these objects. By the very characteristics of these stone objects, the useful function of the bag disappears. Losing all functionality, the object is now transformed into a symbol-object, an icon.

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