A Korean Artist Brings New Dimension to Iconic Portraits of Mother Teresa and Van Gogh

Park Seung Mo doesn’t just take photographs. The Korean-born, Brooklyn-based artist takes (or appropriates) a photograph, then uses a projector to superimpose the photograph onto layers of wire mesh. He then starts cutting away at the mesh, in a reductive process that, with the addition of a light source, results in striking images. The final works are a rare kind of portraiture: the subjects, multidimensional and often captured in motion, seem almost alive. And each work is simultaneously rich in texture and transparent, making for unusual, dynamic visions.

While some of his subjects are anonymous (like Maya 2444 and Maya 3004) many of the artist’s works portray familiar faces. There’s Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe (2014), Mo’s version of Vincent van Gogh’s famed work of the same name, and a close-up of the late Mother Teresa’s deeply lined face. In this case, the artist’s photographs are reproductions of iconic faces, yet his reimaginings challenge the viewer to look twice. The original van Gogh self-portrait, for instance, employs vivid hues of red and orange, but in Mo’s wire mesh version, there’s no color to distract from the details, like the subject’s expression. The same might be said of the artist’s Mother Teresa (2014); the absence of color, and the depth of the material, only accentuates the pain in her eyes, the determination in the firm line of her mouth.