Photorealism

Photorealism took shape in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, growing out of Pop Art and running counter to Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism: painters study one or more photographs and reproduce them in paint. In 1973 a Brussels dealer titled a large exhibition Hyperréalisme, the source of the term hyperrealism. In Korea, Kim Kang-yong (born 1950), known as the brick painter, led the group of hyperrealist painters; instead of traditional materials he paints with sand and adhesive. His recent works no longer show bricks, only cubes, gaps and shadows: flat surfaces of sand and paint that create an illusion of depth and space through shadow.

Look at the surface from the side: does it really rise and fall? Is each shadow cast by the light, or painted?

Is this a painting or a photograph? What gave it away?

• Photography 사진→Photorealist painters work from photographs.