Yaloo has been recognized for exploring voluptuous, alluring aesthetics and reinterpreting repeating daily images into something magical and whimsical. She focuses on delicate tensions between the obvious opposites such as objectivity and subjectivity, superficial and metaphysical, fast and slow, active and passive, western and eastern, or extraordinary and ordinary and more. Rather than finding the middle ground for these polarized stereotypical notions, she instinctively goes to the extreme level of expression on both sides but is still able to embrace the characteristic of both ends at the same time, which almost makes everything seem elaborately calculated. But the true inspiration in her work does not lie in the logical, linguistical approach but in sensuous and rhythmic visual delight.
With this new series of work, Magic Wand For Your Mind, Yaloopop blurs the boundary between these opposites even further by excessively pushing the limits. The idea of magic wand is intriguingly complicated in contemporary Korean culture. Two different context of magic wand, the traditional fantastic wand for transformation and cheering tool for Korean Pop music scene, is fused into one idiosyncratic Magic Wand. The subject, who used to shake the wand to reveal the secret identity of its own, now has become someone who changes an objective person, a beloved pop star, into something else. The see-er and the seen have practically changed their roles in who actually actively transforms the world in perceptual sense.
Yaloo uses Korean pop culture and Korean style Pop Art imagery to talk about the identity of a Korean living abroad. Instead of suggesting outdated criticism or unilateral longing of homesickness, she leads her emotions to a vestibule to a fantastic space of virtually created YalooPop World. Her way of expression is confusing, fancy, busy, ludicrous, and abundant. But in that, she surely uses her own laws of order with a pungent insight to show a side of this world in one of the most original and personal dialogue.
It is highly recommended for audiences to find how many different oppositions are circularly in interchange while being fully absorbed in her rapturous visual ecstasy.
TEXT l Hounyeh Kim, Gallery Jungdabang Project, Seoul, Korea
Yaloo는 실험 애니매이션과 사변적 월드빌딩을 중심으로 작업하는 비주얼 아티스트이다. 그녀의 작업은 일상과 동시대 문화 속에서 발견되는 텍스트, 사물, 도시 환경, 온라인 이미지 등의 파편들을 수집해 장소특정적 설치작업을 만든다. 음악가, 디자이너, 작가, 건축가 등 다양한 분야의 협업자들과의 작업은 중요한 부분을 차지한다. 서울과 로스앤젤레스를 기반으로 활동하며 3D 스캐닝, 모션 캡처, 생성형 AI와 같은 기술을 활용하며 신화, 민속, 과학적 상상력에서 영감을 얻으며 이야기, 믿음, 그리고 기술이 문화와 세대를 가로지르며 어떻게 순환하고 변화하는지를 탐구한다.
Yaloo is a visual artist working with moving image installation and speculative worldbuilding. Her work gathers fragments from everyday life and circulating culture—texts, artifacts, urban environments, childhood media, and online imagery—and reconfigures them into immersive, site-responsive video installations. Collaboration with musicians, designers, writers, and architects is central to her practice. Working from the perspective of a Korean artist based between Seoul and Los Angeles, she engages technologies such as 3D scanning, motion capture, and generative AI while drawing from mythology, folklore, and scientific imagination. Through these hybrid processes, her work explores how stories, beliefs, and technologies circulate across cultures and generations.
얄루는 서울과 로스앤젤레스를 기반으로 활동하는 디지털 미디어 아티스트이다. 그녀는 미국 시카고예술대학교(School of the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC)에서 Film, Video, New Media, and Animation 전공으로 BFA와 MFA 학위를 받았다. 아시아문화전당(한국), 후쿠오카 아시아 미술관(일본), 지오픽션(Geofiction) 프로젝트의 일환으로 참여한 가오슝 피어-2 아트센터(대만), 웨스턴 프론트와 라 방드 비디오(캐나다), 헤드랜즈 센터 포 더 아츠와 베미스 센터 포 컨템포러리 아츠(미국) 등 다양한 국제 레지던시에 선정되어 활동했다. 작품은 서서울미술관(한국), 더 포토그래퍼스 갤러리와 FACT 리버풀(영국), 일렉트라 갤러리(캐나다 몬트리올) 등 여러 국제 기관에서 전시 및 상영되었다. 또한 Video Data Bank의 Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Scholarship을 수상했으며, 뉴욕 AHL Foundation으로부터 Visual Arts Gold Prize를 받았다. Gyeonggi MoMA(GMOMA) & IBK Young Artists Award 수상자로 선정되어 경기도미술관에서 개인전을 개최했다. 현재 캘리포니아 인스티튜트 오브 디 아츠(CalArts) 실험애니메이션(Experimental Animation) 프로그램의 교수로 재직 중이며, 뉴욕 뉴뮤지엄(New Museum)의 NEW INC Expanded Realities Track 멤버로 활동하고 있다.
Yaloo is a visual artist working with digital media based in Seoul and Los Angeles. She received her BFA and MFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC). She has been selected for fully funded international residencies including the Asia Culture Center (Korea), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung (Taiwan) as part of Geofiction, Western Front and La Bande Vidéo (Canada), as well as Headlands Center for the Arts and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (United States). Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally at institutions including Seo-Seoul Museum of Art (Korea), The Photographers’ Gallery and FACT Liverpool (UK), and Elektra Gallery (Montreal), among others. She was awarded the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Scholarship from Video Data Bank and received the Gold Prize in Visual Arts from the AHL Foundation in New York. She is also the recipient of the Gyeonggi MoMA (GMOMA) & IBK Young Artists Award, which culminated in a solo exhibition at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in Korea. Yaloo is currently a faculty member in the Experimental Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a member of the NEW INC Expanded Realities Track at the New Museum in New York.