Ko Young-hoon

Ko Young-Hoon (born 1952) is a South Korean painter.
Biography.
Ko was born in 1952, on Jeju Island, and graduated from Hongik University. He lives and works in Seoul. His work is known for its hyperrealism that invokes "trompe-l'œil".
Art.
By representing objects with their most minute details, Ko, in the line of Magritte, questions our beliefs in authenticity and objectivity. But if his work clearly draws on Western influences, it is also the product of an almost mystical reflexion on traditional Korean aesthetic values and on the concepts of nothingness (mu 無) and existence (yu 有).
His work can be considered pertaining to both Hyperrealism and Surrealism. The critic Gérard Xuriguera says of his series "Stonebook": "Combining in his painting lettered messages and their relation to stones, he positions them within the pages of an open book or imposed on newspapers, strangely gravity-free, in a way that creates contrasts in tension, modifying the sense of the displaced objects. This creates a sort of wakened dream, never broken from natural ebbs, in which reality and illusion combine." 