Artist Oh so very playful

Seung Yul Oh rides his seesaw in his playground installation. Picture / Greg Bowker

When Korean-born artist Seung Yul Oh moved to Auckland nearly 10 years ago, he anticipated a snowy, alpine leisure land. "The reason that I was really excited about New Zealand was snowboarding but in Auckland there is no snow," he says with a laugh. "I was expecting that I would be snowboarding every day and I've only been twice."

Fortunately Oh also had the intention of studying art, a recreational pursuit he says anyone can partake in.

"Anything can be entertainment and I think that making art is just another possibility of being a human being. The making of it is more fun than anything else."

There is a DIY roughness to Oh's work. His animal-like constructions are made from wood, concrete, or found objects, and are reminiscent of folk-art, an association he approves of.

"I am really interested in that. I really enjoy anyone who is making things. Even when we talk to somebody or we are thinking something and you doodle, or in your pocket you are rolling paper or a little dust - all that kind of activity. I think that is really interesting, how it's not just artists making art. Those very insignificant things are great, I think."

Oh's choice of materials is similarly playful. By using extruding foam, balloons and popcorn, Oh is invoking a more fundamental experience of creativity, which most people can trace to their childhood.

In the video work The Ability To Blow Themselves Up, exhibited last year at the New Gallery, Oh showed his friends inflating balloons until they burst.

"I want to capture that very fundamental possibility of their human condition that we don't even notice," he says of the genuinely shocked reactions he elicits from each participant.

Oh's materials also add a random factor and he likes to let his creations guide themselves, suggesting what to do next and surprising him with the results.

"It is exciting to see what's going to come next. It's creating something that doesn't exist in this world."

The paintings that accompany Oh's large installation playground are a good example of his process, shifting between abstract, blobby shapes and strange sketchy creatures.

"I do a lot of doodling, every morning and every day, and new forms and new sculptures and anything comes out of them. I find painting is very musical; you just bring these elements and colours and forms and it comes out and harmonises in a new work."

Making the most noise in the Starkwhite exhibition Chew Chew Tongue is a large wooden box emanating deep electronic notes. Oh says it was meant to be a bird but, by finishing sculptures sooner than planned, he ended up with more interesting results.

"You have an idea and you are making things to that stage, but in the process you are finding different qualities from the certain different stages, and that has more potential to be something.

"Every single object is your baby and you work until it is alive to you and it speaks to you."

Oh's playful, process-oriented approach has proven popular. Last year he was included in Artspace's annual New Artist exhibition, in 2004 he won the Waikato National Art Award and, in 2003, the Goldwater Art Award. He has his first solo dealer show at Starkwhite and is about to have work exhibited at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Oh's world is not entirely inhabited by cute woodland creatures and children's parties a la Beatrix Potter or A.A. Milne. Rather, this is the scatological boys' land of stinky entrails, where holes are for putting fingers in, toys are for pulling apart, bugs are for poking and goopy forms are not so much extruded as excreted.

Oh talks of the tendency to throw things, turn them inside-out, splash and spit from high buildings. "I heard that 95 per cent of boys spit when they grow up to a certain height. That's a kind of weird thing, eh?"* Chew Chew Tongue, by Seung Yul Oh, Starkwhite, 510 K Rd, to Feb 28