Title of art	공작도시-붉은 지붕/Artificial City: Red Roof			Sector	Painting (회화)
Art specifications	111?144cm			Material technique	Oil on canvas
Collection year	2001			Production year	1984
Gallery	Seoul Museum of Art			Artist	Son, Sang-Ki
Description of art	“Artificial City: Red Roof” (1984) is a piece belonging to Son’s major series of the 1980s. In this phase, Son frequently adopted intense, disruptive techniques to create a sense of speed, leaving scratch marks by using a sharp knife instead of a brush. The theme of the “artificial city” may have first emerged during his college days, but it was expressed in full form during the Ahyeon-dong years. In contrast with the indigenous ambience often readily apparent in his earlier works, this series is unique in its use of major motifs such as skyscrapers and shops with their steel shutters lowered; trees with their branches fallen; poor hillside villages crowded with shacks, and suburban landscapes and busy streets. The dark brown landscape where houses are crowded against one another along the gentle slope of the hills stands in stark visual contrast with the grey-white buildings filling the right portion of the plane. The urban landscape twisted in such a grotesque manner strongly conveys a bleak, gloomy atmosphere, while rough scratches all over the canvas convey visually the heavy psychological pressure of the artist as he gazes at urbanization. This expressiveness powerfully delivers Son’s will to expose political manipulation as he looks behind the curtain with uncontrollable anger and resentment.
Address	61, Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul			Source	Seoul Metropolitan Government