Five Empty Worlds

The art of BAHC Yiso (1957-2004) is characterized by an idiosyncratic “black comedy” that can be classified into no aesthetic categories of modernist art. Five Empty Worlds well exemplifies the distinctive nature of BAHC Yiso’s work that derails from every system of aesthetics and all the enlightening semantic networks. There are five circles reminiscent of the sun, the moon, and stars in the sky, and yet they are just nothing but “holes”. The harder one tries to impart certain meanings pertaining to the universe to this, the more faded becomes its true meaning. This is not about “meaninglessness” but about “the impossibility of giving meaning”. Formally, too, at a casual glance it seems to be quite a fit to the typical mode of Minimal Art, but a closer look reveals a mere construct of paper circles attached onto the surface of a metal plate supported by seemingly sloppy wood struts impaled on two shoddy concrete pedestals. The use of these cheap materials can be interpreted to be intended for the formation of an intentional parody for Minimalism, which has been engulfed in “high culture” and further reconfirms the unparalleled nature of BAHC Yiso’s artistic practices to which no particular modernist aesthetic categories are applicable. Moreover, the ambiguous identity of his work—it is hard to determine it is a painting or a sculpture—helps his work to reject also any medium-based distinction.