Won Beomsik: Archisculpture

This volume offers a humorous typology: architectural collages assembled from buildings from throughout the world. The dome gets taller and taller, one balustrade spans the next—yet this spectacular tower was never built; it is merely the result of the collage technique applied by the South Korean artist Won Beomsik (born 1972). The series, initially begun in London, assembles and combines details from photographs of buildings by a variety of architects. Beomsik's deconstruction of the urban landscape allows new arrangements and connotations and tells unexpected stories. Archisculpture plays with cultural conventions and blind spots: an exaggerated, exotic tower pagoda seems realistic to the Western eye until we detect the expressive artificiality of a bold construction consisting of a storefront with a Baroque dome.