As the title of the piece suggests, this work was specially made for the 2017 opening of SIGNIEL SEOUL, and consists of 150,000 stainless steel pin nails (15 mm) driven with a staple gun into a painted wooden panel. After tacking the nails in place, Yoo applies color on top, and then grinds down only the nail heads, exposing the metal. The chiaroscuro produced by the red-toned background and the shimmering pins form the image of a beautiful forest. His work reveals subtle differences depending on the angle it is viewed from. From afar, it offers up a sensual landscape. But as we inch closer, the densely packed pins start to resemble an abstract work of art chronicling the artist’s labors. The ever-changing waves of shimmering silver formed by the nails add another layer of enjoyment to this work.

Yoo Bong-Sang has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and his works evince a sophisticated sensibility acquired during his two decades of residence in France and its contemporary art scene. The artist, known for his work with nails, began using them to produce pieces of art requiring extensive labor from the year 2000. His work involves tens of thousands of nails, the points of which form lines and shapes like pixels on a liquid-crystal screen or a pointillist painting, representing a new artistic method. Yoo drives the nails into a planar surface, grinds down the nail heads, and relies on the nails and the shadows that fall on the background to create natural landscapes. From the artist’s perspective, the landscape serves as a tool to convey the quality of meditation. In the works of Yoo Bong-Sang, the landscape is both implied and at the same time depicted in material form as an object. The nails that populate the surface of his works conduct the light in directions that change according to the viewer’s angle, and the physical properties of the steel that are discernible when viewed at close quarters also stimulate the urge to touch them.