deodorant type

“Deodorant type” is an exhibition by young talented Korean artist Gwon Osang at Manchester Art Gallery. The name for the exhibition was inspired by artist’s interest in advertising, especially by remarkable fact of advertising failure in Asia.
As artist explains himself: “Their attempt was bound to fail in many respects. For one, Asians do not have the problem that deodorants are designed to solve. Two, they used South East Asian models to promote their products when a Caucasian model would have been far more effective in North East Asia. These failures are basically rooted in misunderstanding of the other. The title of my work “Deodorant Type” was meant in part as a reference to such misunderstandings”.
Osang’s sculptures are examples of such cultural misunderstandings. They give us an insight into how we interpret and misinterpret other people’s behavior and appearance and how important are someone’s hairstyle, clothes and position when we are making mistakes in perceiving people.
The production process of these sculptures is quite tricky, time consuming and delicate. Each model has to be photographed in a very detailed way, so it takes up around three hours and three hundred frames. Each sculpture is cut with precision out of Styrofoam and then photographed details are attached to it forming face, body, clothes and hair.
The final result is fascinating.