Media artist Yangachi (b. 1970) has explored the influence and nature of technology on society, culture, and politics, beginning with his web-based works in the early 2000s. Through a variety of media, including installation, video, text, and photography, he captures the contemporary world intertwined with technology while conducting artistic experiments that test and expand the boundaries of media.

The artist has been working under the pseudonym “Yangachi,” an online ID he initially used in his early work, instead of his real name, Jo Seong-jin. His first exhibition under the name “Yangachi” as a media artist was his 2002 solo show, “Yangachi Guild,” held at Ilju Art House.
 
The web project Yangachi Guild (2002), which shares the same title as the exhibition, adopted the format of a popular online shopping mall. Unlike a typical online gallery that might screen videos or display photos, Yangachi Guild functioned as an online marketplace, incorporating features like membership registration, search, and purchasing options to sell so-called “Yangachi products,” thus following the operational principles of an e-commerce platform.

Through this work, Yangachi encapsulates a sardonic critique of a “양아치(yangachi; bastard) society” that blindly follows superficial social values, highlighting the paradox of “real” products being sold in the “virtual” space of the internet. At the same time, Yangachi Guild was connected to an installation in the offline space of Ilju Art House, revealing the dual nature of visibility and invisibility inherent to the internet.

In his solo exhibition “eGovernment” at Insa Art Space in 2003, Yangachi presented another web-based project, eGovernment (http://www.egovernment.or.kr/), which critically addresses the societal implications of advancing information technologies.
 
Yangachi focused on how technologies like resident registration, smart cards, CCTV, electronic fingerprinting, and real-name internet systems are used by governments and corporations for surveillance and control, while individuals remain unaware of how their personal data is utilized. Through the mechanism of eGovernment, he proposes a counter-surveillance system, allowing individuals, rather than institutions, to purchase data.
 
Upon accessing eGovernment, users respond to a series of questions designed by the artist, entering details about themselves and their families, including names, genders, and registration numbers. This process reveals how their data becomes a purchasable commodity within eGovernment, accessible to other members for $10.

After his initial web-based projects, Yangachi began to explore more complex, multifaceted forms of work based on storytelling, including installations, video, sound, photography, drawing, and performance. One notable example is Middle Corea: Yangachi Episode (2008-2009), which begins with the story of a fictional nation, “Middle Corea,” situated between South and North Korea, illustrating the influential narrative power of media.
 
Comprised of three episodes, Middle Corea: Yangachi Episode starts with the tale of the Kim’s Factory, an establishment in Middle Corea created to dismantle existing national systems. The first episode presents the “Kamikaze Bike,” a powerful missile-equipped bike produced at the Kim’s Factory, symbolically aimed at “destroying” all systems.

The second episode is about a “rumor gun,” a gun for snipers that creates glitches in the world's systems, and the third and final episode is about a “satellite” that people connected to Kim's factory build and launch for a new world full of golden light, free of ideology, only to be destroyed along with all the golden light.
 
The last episode of Middle Corea: Yangachi Episode was developed as a new form of live performance, integrating film, theater, sound, and visual art, using surveillance cameras installed in the building to intensively show the episode.

In the case of A Night of Burning Bones and Skin, which was presented in 2014, he reinterpreted a story from the novel The Cloud Dream of the Nine, which deals with a 'virtual' space, by applying it to the current era. The title of the work comes from the name of an erotic movie produced under the “3S policy” (screen, sex, sports) promoted by the regime in the early 1980s, which diagnosed the current society as a “sick society” just as it was then.
 
Therefore, the work is set in a cave, which is a metaphor for the dark past and the present from which we cannot escape. The work is composed of images of a man wandering through various dark spaces such as a cave and a factory, showing the disconnection of human relationships, anxiety and fear of unspecified others, and closed situations, along with objects and sounds that evoke both the 80s and present.

“Thirty years ago, power and control were visible, but now they are systematically operated under subtle control, and we just don't recognize them because they are invisible,” the artist explained. A Night of Burning Bones and Skin is a work that reveals the current absurd social structure that operates behind the scenes in the visible realm, exposing it on a synesthetic level.

In this way, Yangachi has focused on the patterns of relationships, or networks, operating between the state and individuals, as well as between individuals themselves. In his early works utilizing the web, he primarily dealt with phenomena networked through internet technology. Later, he has visualized various networks within our society through diverse media.
 
In his solo exhibition “Galaxy Express” at Barakat Contemporary in 2020, the artist created a world of ‘networks of things’ that transcends distinctions between subject and object, body and object, and the artificial and the natural. The exhibition featured works combining allegorical or religious symbols and possessing multiple eyes and organs.

To enable us to sense a rapidly changing world without compressing it into familiar interpretations, the artist presents objects that embody futuristic signs with multiple eyes and sensory organs, guiding the audiences to discover clues within them.

The video work Galaxy Express (2020), presented in this exhibition, was created using ‘new eyes’—technologies like thermal imaging cameras and LiDAR. LiDAR, which generates 3D images solely from quantified data without a lens, challenges the conventional notion that a lens, like an eye, is necessary to create images. This work hints at a near future that unfolds around networks of data, independent of human visual perception mechanisms.

In his solo exhibition “Rachael,” held last year at art center nabi, the artist portrayed the city of Seoul using elements like cars, LiDAR, 5G, radio, cell phones, and the Discord app. Presented as both an exhibition and an experiential project, “Rachael” enabled viewers to access and envision a near-future Seoul by shaping the city as a total technological world through Rachael, a meta-human conceived within the project.
 
In this way, Yangachi has continued to explore the field and essence of 'media' by experimenting with contact points between the invisible, intangible yet existent worlds. In his artistic realm, technology serves as both a medium reflecting society and a device to connect humans and non-humans tangled within it, as well as a lens to view a world of latent possibilities.

“My work introduces fabricated narratives into influential potential worlds, where the outcome is verified. It is a series of events disguised as coincidence, a continuum of experiences with insufficient understanding, ultimately leading to encounters with unstable relationships.”

Yangachi studied Sculpture at Suwon University College of Art & Design and received his MFA in Media Arts from Yonsei University Graduate School of Communication and Arts. His works have been exhibited nationally via National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2016, 2013, 2012, 2004); Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Korea (2018, 2010); Busan Biennale, Korea (2016); Gangwon Biennale, Korea (2018); Seoul Museum of Art, Korea (2016, 2015); Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea (2018, 2011, 2010); Arko Museum of Art, Korea (2017, 2020); and Nam June Park Art Center, Korea (2016, 2015, 2008).
 
His works have been included in numerous international exhibitions and events in France, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, the United States, and Chile. Recipient of the Hermes Missulssang Award in 2010, Yangachi has his works housed in several prominent institutions such as National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, and Amorepacific Museum of Art.

References

• 양아치, Yangachi (Artist Website)
• 바라캇 컨템포러리, 양아치 (Barakat Contemporary, Yangachi)
• 서울시립미술관, WEB-RETRO (Seoul Museum of Art, WEB-RETRO)
• 네오룩, 양아치 조합 (Neolook, Yangachi Guild)
• 월간미술, [Review]양아치 – 뼈와 살이 타는 밤
• 바라캇 컨템포러리, 갤럭시 익스프레스 (Barakat Contemporary, Galaxy Express)
• 아트센터 나비, 레이첼(Rachael) (art center nabi, Rachael)