Night Break, the current show at Mokspace, compares two Korean photographers who work at night. One of Kim Shin-wook’s ghostly tree pictures, in which the tree is picked out in foreground brightness against a dark background, won him an award at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. At Mokspace we are able to see a broader collection from this series. Lyndhurst has a tree illuminated by backlighting against a deep red sky, while New Forest could be a haunted wood from out of Tolkein’s Middle Earth.
Meanwhile, Kim Taedong’s work is executed in urban settings in the small hours of the morning. The photographer approaches random passers-by and persuades them to pose for photographs. The unexpected encounter perhaps explains why the subjects look so stiff and uneasy in their settings, but each image is striking.
Well worth a visit.
