FOIL GALLERY is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Korean photographer Seung Woo Back. This exhibition will introduce the artist’s works in Japan for the first time.

The artist, Seung Woo Back has produced several series of photographs under a theme which is consistently seen in all Seung Woo Back’s works. He carefully composes the objects and makes the viewers get lost in Back’s fantasy of strange, synicall and distorted "REAL WORLD", which exists in the border in between reality and unreality.
In this exhibition "REAL WORLD", you will find two series of works which, in a sense, position in the other extreme.

《Real World》 is a series of photographs taken in a thema park in South Korea which features miniatures of world-famous tourism places. There the fake architectures and realistic Seoul’s landscape coexist, the rather calm images bring weired sensation and suggest the envious looks the South Koreans seem to turn towards outside of the country. Another series,《Blow Up》 is a set of enlarged photographs extracted from the original film taken in North Korea. Lika a sneak shot, the images play skilfully on their viewers’ voyeuristic interests, on the other hands, reality of the unliaristic country will be gradually sliped out from the blow-up images, which are different from the scene we normally see through sometimes exaggerated reports the mass media bring.

Mixing these two different series togther in one exhibition, we reveal the ironical fantasy and never-fulfilled wish of the two coundties and force the most realistic state of the Korean Peninsula come to the front.

Seung Woo Back Profile：
Born in Taejon, South Korea in 1973. Lives and Works in London and Seoul. Graduated from M.F.A. Photography in Chung Ang University in 2002, and MA Fine Art and Theory in Middlesex Universitiy, Lonodn, in 2005.In 2006, Back has held two solo shows, “Blow Up” at Gana Beaubourg, Paris and “108 Anguish” at On Photography, Frankfurt, while he’s actively joined in several group shows in various places such as London, Shanghai, Brussels, Madrid, Cologne and Blastiva. The image from 《Real World》was used for the cover of the prestigious British pohotography Magazine Portofolio, and also his latest solo show “Real World” at Insa Art Centre, Seoul in 2007finished with a great success, he is one of the most notable young Korean photographers,who attracts attentions from all over the world. Accompanied with this exhibiton, his first photobook REAL WORLD will be released by FOIL.