Ji Yong-Ho (B. 1978), Lion 2. Photo Sotheby's

stainless steel and used tyres, 390 by 122 by 190cm.; 153 ½ by 48 by 74 ¾ in. 
 
Executed in 2008, this work is unique.

NOTE: Ji Yong-Ho was born in 1978 and studied in his native Korea and the New York University. He has exhibited his startlingly original sculpture all over the world and has garnered a strong reputation for his work. The present work, Lion 2 , is a powerful example of his unique vision. The raw intensity of the animal's form is enhanced by his use of rubber tyres. This recycled medium lends an alien power and vivifies the abnormal form of the Lion. The tyres' richly textured with its furrows and abrasions, help define the slick muscle groups that harness to the steel core to emanate a ferocious tension.

However, the sculpture's not an exercise purely in imaginative fiction, Ji Yong-Ho also explores the questionable scientific advances of the modern era, in particular the field of genetic modification. This is based on his scepticism towards those 'who seek to challenge nature by creating an entirely new form of life through modifying genes of animals, plants, and human beings.' These are the debatable technological advances comprising Ji Yong-Ho's resistance to mutation tainted by human interference, in which 'the original identity of all natural living creatures may one day disappear.' The threat embodied by the Lion may be that of its potential existence, a reality that is even farther removed from our basic relationship with nature.

Ji Yong-Ho draws his artistic influence from classical art but blends it with a modern eastern aesthetic. Ji Yong-Ho sites figurative sculpture masters like Rodin and Michelangelo as his greatest influences, in particular Rodin who sought to perfect the 'powerful and exaggerated posture' to convey his subjects' emotional states. The technical mastery and wild imagination of Ji Yong-Ho finds such an eloquent expression in the bewitching and fearsome Lion 2