Flughafen, 2005

The photographic work of Korean artist Ho-Yeol Ryu renders permeable the boundaries between reality and fiction, and puts the viewer’s perception to the test. Starting from everyday scenes, Ryu draws on the resources of digital editing to create miniature worlds that pose questions about reality and illusion in the medium of photography. In Ryu’s work Flughafen [Airport] (2005), consisting of various layered shots of airplanes taking off, different temporal levels overlap. Airports are of decisive importance for a globalized society, for it is at these transit sites, or non-places, that questions of migration and identity become apparent and borders are ostensibly renegotiated on a daily basis, such as at passport control. In his work, Ryu develops portraits of almost surreal, everyday events in a globalized world in which time and space are compressed. (AE)