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www.groovekorea.com / April 2014 62 MUsIC & ARTs edited by emilee Jennings (emilee@groovekorea.com) S eoul-based street artist and illustrator Michael Roy uses public spaces around the world to create poignant piec- es about anything from personal loves to oblique com- mentary on Korea’s future. He recently returned from producing a piece on the Berlin Wall, and prior to that had just finished a display for a show in Apgujeong’s Zombie 666. The soft-spoken Southerner is humble and forthright about what he does — quietly proud and always preparing for the future. Displaying real emotion through his artwork is one of Roy’s goals in life. Pushed toward visual expression by his arts magnet high school, Roy went on to graduate from the Memphis College of Art and eventually turned to public art. “I wanted to avoid the hyper-articulated artistic vocabulary that restricted the content to the academic,” he says. “That kind of organically took me to street art.” Traveling has been a major part of his inspiration; he takes the good with the bad and tries to view new cultures with an open mind. During his time here, he has heard people say they are aware of the cultural differences, but he feels some still tend to judge everything from a Western perspective. “A lot of people come here ready to be really haughty about how unhealthy the conformity in Korea is, even before they arrive here,” says Roy. “Your perspective needs to be challenged when you’re abroad.” Roy’s growing catalog includes his tribal paintings, which elic- it a sense of otherworldly defiance while also providing gentle mocking insight into Korean life. “I try to be sincere in spite of the seemingly ubiquitous movement to be embarrassed about sincer- ity,” he says. This is best seen in pieces like “FARM LiFe,” a 7-foo t-high car- icature on a wall in Bucheon proudly displaying a knuckle tattoo that spells the title. A new piece, “Get Off Of The Phone,” depicts the all-too-regular Korean phenomena of cellphone addiction with a giant monkey on the back of an oblivious, grinning man gazing at his cellphone with three eyes. Roy’s large collection of hip-hop portraits also reflects his deep-rooted love for a genre that often communicates with similar tones and content to street art. The evocative figures shown throughout his collection portray a deep humanity in spite of their obvious nonhuman facial features. It is this strength of expression that makes his invertible figures seem charming and friendly when they could just as easily be terrifying. Roy realizes there may be several artists with a similar aes- thetic. “There are millions of people drawing,” he says. “Humans are really similar. It’s almost impossible for there not to be other people out there doing the same thing.” He doesn’t mind com- parisons, though. Instead, he considers it flattering that others, independently of him, may reach a similar conclusion. If more than one talented artist decides to depict the same thing, then surely this is a good sign. “The public are a good judge,” he says. His accommodating views extend to life in Korea. He says he “gets really bogged down by the cynicism a lot of foreigners have when they come to Korea.” While most Westerners often consid- er the Korean pursuit of conformity to be childish, Roy notes that the Western idea of individuality could be taken as equally fatalis- tic and contrarian; in a world where individuality is the vogue, we also seek to conform and fit in. “Westerners immediately assume individuality is so much better than conformity but honestly, it’s M i C h a e l R o y Street artiSt paintS a real-life picture Story by Conrad Hughes / Photos courtesy of Michael Roy