Integrity of Expression Founded upon Dream Vision Dream vision that allegorizes dreams was a widely used form of narration by medieval poets which faithfully represents the unique expression of Kim Hyunsoo. Dream vision is a non-linear psychological activity that pierces through the different times and spaces of past, present and future; It is a kind of daydream where a situation related to the future or something unknown is imagined, as the imaginative memory based on past experience meets the present desire. Such dream vision, in Kim Hyunsoo’s art, is depicted as extremely personal desires and fantasies that extend from the artist’s childhood amusement. Its truthfulness and sincerity are amplified through the visual irony we see in Kim Hyunsoo’s sculpture that resembles the human body as much as possible and thereby incarnates hyper realism. In fact, hyper realism denounces subjectivity and creates a photographic scene from a neutral voice. Nevertheless, while Kim Hyunsoo’s art advocates hyper realistic sculpture from the exterior, it basically embraces an extremely subjective narrative in the interior. It takes phenomenal effort and enormous physical time for an artist to create a very real dream vision. Once the narrative is complete and which character and pose would be realized is decided, the artist has to first develop the structure and then attach clay. A hyper realistic exterior that even shows fine vessels and pores is created through this process, which will then be followed by the casting process using polyester resin to reveal the overall outline. The human body will be vested with life with the colors of oil paint, and by attachment of hair and eyebrows- planted one by one instead of a whole wig- and eyeballs that were manually created to deliver the narrative. Precisely depicted curves of the human body, together with the delicate skin that shows signs of pores and vessels, movement of almost-live vessels that seem to inflate and deflate, and the quiver of the subtle pupils that seem to be telling a story; They all prove the artist’s delicacy and the ability to express, and lead the viewer to encounter a life that exists in a fantasy world where time stands still. The key elements Kim Hyunsoo describes throughout the [breik] exhibition are a boy and a horn. The boy is the persona of the artist himself that is also the subject of the whole story, and the horn adds tension to the exhibition as it symbolizes the growth into an adult, the idea that the artist represented as the boy rejects. Such are clearly manifested in the piece, . The boy in the piece rejects the horn that naturally grows on him as he ages. Full growth of the horn would mean internal and external growth into an adult, and so the boy refuses the idea and expresses his wish to stay as a boy by breaking the horn. The boy in the art piece also represents the future of the boy in who wears a large fur hat to hide the growing horn and blankly stares at the empty space. In , another piece where the artist’s persona appears, the boy is sleeping and seems to be dreaming. As if representing the desire and the fantasy of the artist to fly away, the boy has wings and is fast asleep, looking as if he will never wake up again. It reminds one of Zhuangzi’s The Butterfly Dream that reads, “One day Zhuangzu became a butterfly in his dream. The butterfly was so busy, realizing truth and living as he wished, that he did not realize that he was Zhuangzu.” Through the artist’s fantasy, this piece, seen from the view of Zhuangzi who crosses between dream and reality, makes one think about what is the real freedom for a person who studies. Although the subject is different, the story told by the series also resembles the Boy series. Again, horn is an important symbol and the story refers to the fact that the deer tends to defend itself and the family by breaking the other’s horn. By depicting a young deer that does not yet have a horn and a mother deer that does not grow horn, the artist describes an unknown that is free from combat and power. On the other hand, through the series, the artist does not directly describe the epic of the growth of a boy based on persona and growth, but seeks to describe the peripheral of the fantasy world where these characters live. Of all the mermaids, Kim Hyunsoo’s mermaid is close to the legendary mermaid that appears in Homer’s stories. The mermaid symbolizes female seduction or trickery, and the reason is because the mermaid has the power to lure seamen in a close-by ship with beautiful songs and make them jump into the sea and die. The mermaid’s song is irresistibly attractive, and so many male had to die. Hyper realistic description of the mermaid in myths and legends in the series does not stand at the center of a great movement, just as supporting actors in the movie or the backdrop of a play. However, its existence itself solidifies the fantasy and the story framework created by the artist. Fairy tale like imagination and purity exist in Kim Hyunsoo’s art. Although the pieces talk about fantasies from the outside, they definitely display our everyday lives in the present. The artist breaths sense and life into past memories or fantasies that tend to be forgotten or stay as imaginations, and conveys the joy and power of dreaming to those who no longer dream during daytime. Dreams that we now see as the result of hyper realistic description cannot be real or alive. Nevertheless, because our past memories, current dreams and imaginations for the future are fully encompassed in the dream vision, we are able to witness the cumulation of the life we lived and the fantasy we dream.