South Korea
Statement
I have a story which has lost its story. It has a subject who is missing a predicate and has no object. The story is only the subject: I, you, we, or they. This is a story of a subject with no body. Fragments of this story come to me intermittently. Whatever triggers these fragments to arrive from the past through a tunnel of oblivion makes me hungry. Cold winds. Clouds overhead. Planes passing overhead. I remember an old man who I cannot forgive. This was surely a story, but none will ever remember it, though I was the protagonist of the story—a story with characters and plot—in which memories disappeared. For this reason, the story without a story is a formless energy mass veiled in loose fabric— a silhouette, more form than the mass beneath it. I start to play with it. It is an external without an internal. It is a result without process. It is probability created by contradictions. My work therefore begins with facing a time which was once my past. It is to see time pulled out and thrown in front of me. It is to gaze at a time which was once my present. It is to recall a time which has now become the past, external to me. So the act of painting becomes one of repainting of memories from the past, in the present, dependent on the future. My work is a journey in search of lost time. It is a journey in search of lost feelings from previous presents. It is an attempt to get into the old present through memories out of time. It is bringing old feelings back to life in the present. Therefore my works are stories about the times that I have passed through, made up of my experiences and memories. My works often depict people and modern cities, and, sometimes nature. They furthermore explore the various relationships between people, time and nature. At other times, the stories and visions come from the spaces between objects and people, in other words, different ‘scapes’, such as landscapes, urbanscapes, even mindscapes.
Profile
GlogauAIR resident from 01 January 2017 to 31 March 2017
GlogauAIR Project
Like the sun is not an antonym for the moon, in the world there are so many synonyms which are neither exactly opposite nor parallel. There are opposite words like yes and no, but also such words as ‘birds and trees’ or’ flowers and butterflies’ which have a correspondence but are neither antonyms nor synonyms. Stones and Trees are different but can be read similarly; a forest and a crowd of people are different but correspond in a way. I am trying to find similarity in visuality, in particular, a conceptual similarity. For more than 10 years my paintings have been devoted to visuality. This experience has made me curious about time based art. The curiosity compelled me to explore another technique; video making. Through learning this new technique, temporality started to phase into my art. When I was working with paintings, I was focused on memories and space. One of the themes that I dealt with was doubts about time. We seldom question time in fact we measure and quantify it with clocks and calendars. It was from there that doubts entered into my works, such as “Passing through, 2013” After finishing that work, my doubts about rules that measure our life led me to my next work “My night is your morning”. As for language, I was focused on visual language. And now temporality has provided direction for my next work. Furthermore I started to have doubts about the concepts of horizontal and vertical. All the ways in which we measure what we follow without question became my motive for new works. The realization is a sea flowing upside down (Is it the same as the sea that I know and the sea that you know?) and a video juxtaposing two unrelated scenes of rain and people walking on a street. At the same time, I will attempt to synchronize visual images and aural sounds. This technique derives from Duane Michals and Michel Gondry. But it is only a method for realizing my concepts. I will go further than those two artists and attempt to synchronize concepts. As in my works “My night is your morning” or “Ringing bell of church and a cock caws”. I plan to juxtapose sounds, such as the sound of cars, of rain, and of thunder, with different videos, for example trees shaking in the wind, an airplane flying overhead, a revolving door, through synchronizing (following rhythm or rhyme or composition). For example, I am planning a video screen containing images of rain, synchronized with the sound of footsteps, of people walking. Images of rain and the sounds of people walking express verticality, as do the leg movements. This implies visual and conceptual similarity. Afterwards, the video of a ringing bell in a church will be shown with the sound of a cock cawing. In this way, the hard to discern visual and aural similarities and commonalities shared by apparently unrelated things are brought out. In the above example, the method of matching two unrelated images and sounds is akin to Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 as well as some of his other novels that feature dual narratives. I plan to paint the things and people surrounding me.The whole course of my artistic work, up to going to Glogau, and including my stay there, will be represented in painting, text and video. I plan to exhibit my art works and publish a book as well. Through this, what I would like to express is how my spatiotemporal atmosphere composes my life, and how I create my spatiotemporal circumstances. This is a bit like small hands touching a big elephant in order to get a sense of the elephant’s shape. Therefore, I call this project, “A story which has lost its story” As I mentioned in my artist statement, “A story which has lost its story” is something I have been intimately involved and entangled with. I would like to disentangle it from my art and play with it.
CV Summary
Education
- 2006 Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Special Student
- 2005 Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Project Student
- 1997 Hongik University, Seoul, BFA
Solo Exhibitions
- 2015 A story of lost content, Gallery Gabi, Seoul
- 2010 Show window in Urbanscape, Gallery Dam, Seoul
- 2009 Travel note, Dr Park Gallery, Yang-Pyeong
- 2008 Urbanscape, Priors Gallery, Seoul
- 2005 The garden of Ulmme, Gallery Nordens Ljus, Stockholm
Group Exhibitions
- 2016 Unexpected; Thirst for Understanding, Gallery ArtBN, Seoul
- 2015 SEMA collection showcase, Buk Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
- 2015 Charity Bazaar, Space K, Kwacheon
- 2015 Painting-Every windows to the world, Blume Museum, Heyri
- 2014 Confession of a Mask, Seoul National University Museum, Seoul
- 2014 Unfamiliar space, Unfamiliar landscape, 63 Sky Art Museum, Seoul
- 2013 Charity Bazaar, Space K, Seoul
- 2013 Thanksgiving2, Ujung Art Center, Seoul
- 2013 Slowscape, Space K, Daegoo
- 2013 Slow Art, Nonbat Art School Underground Gallery, Heyri
- 2012 Small Masterpiece, Lotte Gallery, Seoul
- 2012 Start. Challenge.Adventure. Growing, SCAG Gallery, Seoul
- 2012 Inaugural Exhibition, 1 Gallery, Seoul
- 2012 Healing Camp, Gana Art Center, Seoul
- 2012 Fashion Holic, Galleria Center City, Cheon-An
- 2012 The private city, Gallery Keumsan, Seoul and Heyri
- 2012 Small painting show, Jang-Heung Art Park Museum, Jang-Heung
- 2012 Moment, Jang-Heung Art Park Red Space, Jang-Heung
- 2011 Painter, Paint a novel, Gallery Georack, Seoul
- 2011 Aesthetics of the small, Gallery Art user, Seoul
- 2011 The Moon, Gallery Kimi Art, Seoul
- 2011 Evoke, Gallery 4walls, Seoul
- 2011 New year’s greeting, Gallery K, Seoul
- 2010 Landscape of Rest, Gallery Dr. Park, Yang-Pyeong
- 2010 Village Lost Its Time, Gallery Shin-Han, Seoul
- 2010 Hey Mr. Lonely, Gana Art Pusan, Pusan
- 2010 Urban Utopia, Gallery Curio Mook, Seoul
- 2010 Hey Mr. Lonely, Gana Art Contemporary, Seoul
- 2010 330, Gallery Sun, Seoul
- 2010 Somewhere only we know, Gallery Royal, Seoul
- 2009 Art Road 77, Gallery Han kil, Heyri
- 2009 Lightless Light, IMart Gallery, Seoul
- 2008 Things Dancing, Gallery Dr.Park, Yang Pyeong
- 2008 My lonely planet, SP Gallery, Seoul
- 1998 Antipia, Hanjeon Plaza Gallery, Seoul
- 1997 International Environment Art Festival, Cheong-ju
Awards
- 63 Sky Art Museum New Artist Project, 63 Sky Art Museum, Seoul
- KIMI For You Artist Contest Selection, KIMI Art, Seoul
Collection
- Seoul Museum of Art
- National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea (Art Bank)
- Hoseo University
- GUHO Design
Art Fairs
- 2016 G-Seoul, DDP, Seoul
- 2013 KIAF, Coex, Seoul
- 2013 Hotel Art Fair, Conrad Hotel, Seoul
- 2010 KIAF, Coex, Seoul
- 2010 Hotel Art Fair, Shilla Hotel Seoul
- 2010 SOAF, Coex, Seoul
- 2009 KIAF, Coex, Seoul
- 2008 KIAF, Coex, Seoul
Residencies
- Ujung Art Center Residency (2012.11~2013.10)
- Gana Art Jang-Heung Residency (2010.9~2012.8)
