본문바로가기

금호미술관

전시안내

운율에 맞춰 춤을 추다 Dancing to the Rhyme

  • 전시기간 : 2011-02-16 ~ 2011-03-27
  • 전시장소 : 전관
  • 작가 :

    총 13팀

전시제목: 운율에 맞춰 춤을 추다 Dancing to the Rhyme

오 프 닝 : 2011년 2월 15일 오후 5시

전시일정: 2011년 2월 16일 - 3월 27일

 

참여작가 총 13명: 김나영+그레고리 마스 (서울), 김오안 (파리/서울), 노재운 (서울), 크리스토프 마이어 (비엔나), 우테 뮐러 (비엔나), 나딤 바닥 (비엔나), 박주연 (런던/서울), 믈라딕 비즈믹 (뉴질랜드/비엔나/베를린), 유현미 (서울), 조은지 (서울), 최선아 (베를린), 최승훈+박선민 (서울), 히맨 청 (싱가폴/뉴욕)
 
 
 
 
보이는 운율에 맞춰 춤추다
 
2011년 2월 16일부터 3월 27일까지 열리는 '운율에 맞춰 춤을 추다'는 금호미술관 외부기획 전시다. 이 전시는 작품에 내·외재되어있는 이미지와 언어, 그리고 그것들을 통해 느낄 수 있는 운율과 그 운율을 통해 만들어지는 리듬에 대한 이야기이다. 우리는 종종 현대 미술 전시의 경우, 특히 그룹 전시의 주제가 갖는 역할과 의미, 그리고 전시에 참여하는 작가들의 작업이 정확한 연계성을 띄지 못하는 경우를 발견한다. 이 전시 역시 그러한 고민에서 시작되었다. 이 전시와 함께 큐레이터와 참여작가 모두가 작품을 통해 함께 이야기를 만들고, 그 이야기와 함께 관객과 소통할 수 있는 통로를 찾아간다.

이 전시는 시에 비유되어 설명된다. 불규칙적으로 배열된 작품들은 마치 각각 한 편의 시를 읽는 듯 하다. 그 안에서 우리는 작품 하나 하나에 내재된 운율을 느낄 수 있고, 각각의 작품이 주제와 연결되면서 독특한 어조를 이루는 것을 발견하게 된다. 마치 자유시나 산문시를 읽고 있는 듯한 느낌을 준다. 기획자와 작가들은 이 전시를 통해 현대미술 작품을 보는 관객들의 무감각적인 시선과 현대미술로의 접근에 대한 벽을 허물고, 작품을 감상하는 감각적인 코드를 자극시키고자 한다. 관객들은 작품을 통해 자연스럽게 만들어지는 운율과 리듬을 통해 전시의 흐름을 읽게 되고, 어렵고 복잡하게만 느꼈던 동시대 현대미술 작품들을 먼저 감성을 통해 이해하는 방식을 찾게 될 것이다.

1층 전시 공간은 은유의 공간이자, 가상의 공간이다. 히맨 청의 Walking Long and Hard (1996-2007) 시리즈는 그의 작품 중 현대 미술 행위의 역사적 모델을 차용한 동시대적 사고, 시선 및 감정에 적용한 작품 군에 속한다. 이 작품은 리처드 롱(Richard Long)이 60년대에 진행한 획기적인 워킹 퍼포먼스를 참고한다. 리차드 롱의 퍼포먼스에서 남는 것은 그가 택한 길들에 대한 평범하고 짤막한 지도와 같은 묘사일 뿐이다. 이러한 문서의 형식적인 성질을 현재로 옮기는 작가의 과정은 추상적인 자연 내에서가 아닌 심리적인 긴장감으로 가득 찬 극도로 도회적인 질감의 자연 내에서 이루어진다. 거리를 배회하는 것은 유동성에 대한 찬미가 아닌 좌절과 사랑하는 이와의 이별 후에 스스로 괴로워하고자 하는 의지로 표현된다. 마치 자신이 슬픈 사랑의 노래 속 가사에 등장하는 인물과도 같다. 크리스토프 마이어의 작업은 매체의 수행적이고 해설적인 잠재력을 탐구한다. 이번 전시를 위한 그의 제안은 기능적이고 수행적인 혹은 기능적으로 수행적인 기술들을 수반하는 다양한 레디메이드를 담고 있는 사회적 조각이다. ohne Titel (bar) (2011)에서 미술관 소유의 가구들과 일상적인 오브제(Bofinger chair)로 구성된 조각적인 배치는 건축적인 바(bar)의 원형을 연상시키는 공간을 연출한다. 이 작업은 미술관 창고에 방치되어 있는 가구들을 재배치하고, 그 가구들의 기능들을 원래의 맥락에서 일부 분리시킨다. 또한 일상의 사물들이 미술관의 틀 내에서 새롭게 해석되고 사용됨으로써 재정의되는 사회적인 지침들이다. 어떤 특정한 정의나 내용에 상관 없이 모두가 참여함으로 소통하는 퍼포먼스로의 초대인 것이다. 노재운의 항성시(恒星時) Stardate (2010)는 오래된 SF드라마 속에서 설정된 시간개념이다. 물론 이 시간은 실제가 아닌 가상의 개념이지만 현재 우리가 사용하는 시간개념(그레고리력)을 무너뜨리면서 그 아래에 꿈틀거리는 어떤 다층적인 시간에 대한 감각을 불러일으키는 측면이 있다. 비석에 새겨진 숫자는 작가의 사적인 기억(작가가 태어난 날과 어머니가 돌아가신 날)과 연관되어 있지만 관객의 기억으로도 대체될 수 있다. 그것은 사적일 수도 공적일 수도 있고, 이미 죽은 사람들이나 생명에 대한 것일 수도 또 어떤 특정한 시기와 연관된 것일 수도 있을 것이다. 그러므로 사실 숫자는 무한하게 새겨질 수 있으며 그 무한한 계열의 가능성이 작업이 갖는 오브제로서의 핵심 개념이 된다. 이 작업은 작가의 기억과 그것을 보는 수많은 사람들이 만나서 진동하는 어떤 응축된 인터페이스라고 할 수 있다. 또한 그것은 현실을 추동하는 광적인 속도와 시간에 구멍을 내고 자신만의 방식으로 죽음을 선고한다. 그리고 그렇게 깨어지고 부서진 틈을 통해 사라진 시간과 기억의 소립자들을 소생시키고 그것들이 춤추면서 생성되는 무한한 리듬과 음악들로 우리의 삶을 다시 채우기를 소망하는 일종의 기념비이다.

지하 1층에서는 텍스트가 이미지로 전환되는데, 최승훈+박선민의 We Dance on a Rope와 Let Me Be Vague가 이 공간을 텍스트에서 이미지로 전복시키는 역할을 한다. 아름다운 조명 작업으로만 보이는 이 두 작업은 자세히 올려다 보면, 영문 점자 텍스트 모양으로 전구를 배치한 것을 발견할 수 있다. 최선아 & 크리스토프 마이어의 2/3/3/6 (2011)은 이 전시를 계기로 이루어진 그들의 협업작업이다.최선아(베를린 거주 및 활동)와 크리스토프 마이어(비엔나 거주 및 활동)는 서로를 개인적으로 알지 못했지만 이 전시를 계기로 공동작업을 하기로 결정하였다. 6개의 종이작업을 베를린과 비엔나 사이에 통틀어 세번씩 번갈아 교환하였고, 한 작가가 종이작업을 일시적으로 끝낸 상태에서 다음 작가에게 우편으로 보내면, 그 작업을 받아 다른 작가가 다시 손을 대는 방식으로 작업을 진행시켰다. 상대방이 작업을 어떻게 발전시켰을지는 작업이 배달된 이후에나 알 수 있었을 것이다. 어쩌면 상대가 완성한 부분에 대해 만족하기도 하고, 불만족스러운 부분도 존재했을 것이다. 하지만, 분명 상대가 완성한 부분에 맞춰 그에 어우러지게 작업을 완성시키고자 고심했을 것이고, 그만큼 신중해야만 했을 것이다. 그리고, 자신이 하는 작업의 결과에 대해 상대방이 어떻게 생각할지에 대해서도 스스로 여러 번 질문했을 것이다. 이 작업을 완성하는 과정은 마치 우리 삶 속에 얽혀 있는 ‘관계'와도 일맥상통한다. 여섯 장의 흰 백지에서 시작되어 두 작가의 손을 거쳐 완성된 이 작업은 경위에 대한 설명 없이 작업 만으로는 두 작가의 공동 작업인지 알 수 없을 정도이다.  박주연의 Untitled (confetti on pirate LPs) (2009)는 한 시대를 풍미했던 단색의 불법 복제 음반(빽판) 위에 축제 때 쓰이는 종이 꽃가루를 뿌린 작업이다. 단색으로 인쇄된 음반커버는 경험되지 않은 이국 문화에 대한 향수를 불러 일으키며 당시 제작 금지된 음반들을 원판 그대로 경험하고자 했던 젊은 세대들의 갈증과 열망을 담고 있다. ‘Neil Young – After the gold rush', ‘Van Halem – 1984', ‘Eric Clapton- Mainline Florida', ‘Supertramp (Aries) - Rosie had everything planned', ‘Pink Floyd - The Wall : Another Brick in the Wall', ‘Simon & Garfunkel - The Graduate', ‘Pink Floyd – Animals' 등 총 100개의 작업이 설치되어 보여진다. 전시장의 안쪽 공간으로 이동하면 최승훈+박선민의 daystar ver.1 (2011) 작업을 볼 수 있다. 이 작업은 마치 하나의 시를 연상시킨다. 이 작업은 그들 주변, 일상 속 모습을 관찰하고, 주변에 늘 존재하고 있었지만 미처 느끼지 못했던 새로운 모습들을 담는다. 익숙함과 새로움 등, 삶 속에 발견되는 모든 것들에 대해 생각하고, 실험하고, 판단하고, 결정하는 과정 속에서 발견되는 이미지와, 그것을 발견함으로 발생하는 주관적 시각과 논리를 모두 포함시킨다. 하나의 정답과 줄거리로 설명되는 작업이 아닌, 온전히 작가의 직관에 의지하여 완성된 이 작품은, 작업을 보는 관객들이 스스로 느끼고, 그 느끼는 대로 각자의 시를 만들게 되는 것까지 이 작업을 완성해 가는 과정에 포함시킨다.

3층 전시 공간은 이미지와 텍스트 그리고 그것을 표현하는 방식에 대해 이야기 한다. 유현미의 내안의나The self within (2011)는 인간의 외면과 내면에 관한 완성되지 않은 이야기이다. 이미지와 텍스트(시)로 보이는 이 작업은 관람객들 각자가 보고, 읽고, 느끼는 대로 해석되고, 이야기가 완성된다. 두 채널 영상 작업인 ‘내 안의 나'는 왼쪽 화면에서는 4시간 동안 뇌와 심장 사이에 둔 촛불이 타 들어 가는 과정이 편집 없이 실제로 보이고, 오른쪽 화면에는 작가가 직접 쓴 시 한 편이 마치 영화 속 자막처럼 올라간다. 나딤 바닥의 Zoetrop (2009)은 “장편 영화”의 초기 원형을 보여주는 1880년대에 찍힌 역사적인 사진에 근거한 10-프레임 애니메이션이다. 나딤 바닥은 원래 사진을 리터치하고 일련의 프레임으로 나눔으로써 기구 본래의 기능을 전복하고 순환적인 움직임을 창조한다. ‘Zoetrope'는 그리스어로 ‘Zoe(영어: life)', ‘인생', ‘삶'을 의미하고, ‘τρόπος - tropos(turn)'는 ‘돌다'로 직역, ‘인생의 쳇바퀴'라고 해석된다. 조은지의 Mud Poem-Exodus (2011)는 작가가 진흙 덩어리를 흰 캔버스에 던져 진흙 시를 짓는 작업이다. 2006년에 여성사 박물관에서 처음 보여주었던 이 작업은 2008년 광주비엔날레에서도 보인 적이 있는데, 이번 전시에서는 앞선 두 전시와는 다른 방식으로 진흙 시를 완성하게 된다. 시(텍스트)의 내용은 진흙의 가변적 형태와 성질을 이용하고 있다. The Language (2006)는 행동하는 시 중 하나로 의성적인 사운드를 임프로바이징하는 개념의 악보 작업이다. 김오안의 Useless (2008)는 일상 생활의 사소한 흔적을 기록한 날짜와 같은 개념 작업이다. 지극히 평범함과 완벽히 낯섦 사이의 경계를 모호하게 만드는 이 작업은 그의 사적인 이야기를 담은 사진 스크랩북과도 같다. 일상에서 흔히 볼 수 있지만, 무관심하게 스쳐 지나갈 수 있는 장소나 사물 등의 이미지를 사진에 담고, 각 이미지와 연관되는 단어를 적는다. 그는 사진 속 이미지와 적힌 단어와의 연관 관계를 마치 시처럼 표현한다. 그리고 관객들은 작업 속에 등장하는 단어와 이미지를 함께 봄으로써 지적 지각과 시각적 경험 사이와의 차이를 발견하게 된다.

2층 전시 공간은 사물의 변형된 모습과 역할의 재구성에 대해 이야기 한다. 김나영+그레고리 마스의 작업은 언뜻 보기에 단순한 조각과 같이 보일 수 있지만, 그것을 구성하고 있는 요소들이 함축하고 있는 내용은 다양하다. 김나영과 그레고리 마스는 만화 속 주인공 캐릭터 인형, 영화나 소설 등에서 발견된 대상이나 이야기를 유머러스하게 풍자하여 표현하거나 패러디 하는 등 다양한 방식으로 작업에 적용시킨다. 만약 관람객이 스스로 작품을 보면서 단번에 그 내용을 발견하게 된다면 그것은 행운과도 같다.  It's tough world in here (2011)는 미술 언어가 갖는 반복, 리듬, 그리고 패턴의 성격을 다룬다. 이 작업은 그들이 과거 전시들에서 보여주었던 작업들과 신작들로 구성되는데, 각 작업들은 여러 가지 가능한 반복적 움직임을 만들고, 그로 인해 작품은 자연스럽게 운율과 리듬감을 드러내게 된다. 두 개의 샹들리에, 여배우의 초상, 도자기 담배가 들어있는 가구, 건축 모형과 합체된 키치한 도자기 인형, 뭔지 식별이 분명하지 않은 풍경, 가구, 오브제들로 구성된 설치 작품이 전시된다. 최선아의 Untitled(Coins) I (2011)를 구성하는 재료는 강철, 황동, 구리, 알루미늄이다. 이 금속 종류들은 동전의 생산에 일반적으로 이용되는 주요 금속이다. 동전을 만들기 위해서는 보통 여러 가지 금속들이 비율에 맞추어 합금된다. 그 반면 이 작업에서, 각 금속들은 분리된 상태로 독립적인 형태를 부여 받는다. 금속들은 이 형상화의 과정을 통해, -추상적 의미로 보았을 때- 정화, 추출, 변형되는 과정을 거치게 된다. 이 작업은 동전의 물질성에 주목, 그것을 시적으로 재 시각화 한다. 생략과 은유적, 직유적 요소가 시각적 언어의 기교로 빌려와 사용되었다. Untitled (Coins) II (2011)는 목재 합판 위에 다양한 크기의 작은 구멍이 뚫려있다. 구멍의 크기는 유럽 유로화와 한국 원화의 다양한 동전 크기에 정확하게 상응한다. 뚫린 구멍은 동전의 크기에 상응하지만, 정작 존재하지는 않는 동전을 암시할 뿐이다. 동전이 사라진, 즉 구멍이 뚫린 흔적만 남은 나무 판은 일종의 ‘음(네거티브)의 형상'이라고 볼 수 있다. 그 음(네거티브)의 형상은 양(포지티브)의 존재를 생략하지만, 사라진 존재의 흔적은 오히려 그 존재를 강조, 재 형상화 하기도 한다. 믈라딘 비즈믹의 Sometimes Old Sometimes New (1894/2009)는 1894년에 처음 출판된 Moderne Neubauten aus Deutschland (Modern New Buildings from Germany) 건축 포트폴리오에서 발췌한 일련의 콜라주-사진들이다. 믈라딘 비즈믹은 이 포트폴리오를 베를린의 Charlottenburg에 있는 헌책방에서 발견했는데, 지금은 존재하지 않거나 아주 오래된 당시의 새로운 건물들에 대한 내용보다는, 희귀하고도 매력적이고 섬세한 책의 표면에 매료되었기 때문에 구입했다고 말한다. 그는 오래된 과거 속 건물 이미지에 새로운 생기를 불어넣고 싶었고, 사진 속 그 때(사진을 촬영했던 그 순간)의 시간과 지금(현재)의 시간 사이에 일어난 그 무언가에 대해서, 20세기에 일어난 더 “현대적”인 그 무언가를 이야기 하고자 한다. 모든 발췌된 인쇄 사진은 새롭게 잘라지고 변형되었다. 추가된 패턴들은 관객과 사진 간에 새로운 공간을 형성하고 활성화시킨다. 과거와 현재, 19세기와 21세기, 시간적 공간적으로 둘 사이의 다른 맥락 안에서는 이미지를 어떻게 해석해야 하는지에 대해 질문하게 된다. 본 작업은 “사진”이라는 단순한 쟝르의 분류를 넘어 우리가 그림과 사진을 보는 방식에 대해 재고할 것을 요구한다. 사진을 정지된, “얼어붙은 시간”이라고 본다면 작가는 그 시간이 다시 녹아 흐르길 원한다. 그는 이렇게 말한다. ‘내 작품 속에는 마침표가 없다. 쉼표만 있을 뿐이다!'라고. 우테 뮐러의Untitled (2010)는 감춰 덮어지는 순간이 있고, 특정 요소들이 계속 덧칠되는 과정을 담고 있다. 그리고 그런 과정은 우테 뮐러의 작업에서 가장 중요한 의미를 갖는다. 대충 그린 미완성의 스케치 또한 양식화된 이미지 구성 방식에 따라 작업에 포함된다. 그리고, 직선적인 내러티브에서 분리된 모티브는 점진적으로 축소되고 추상화되어 개별적인 형태로 향하는 과정을 거친다. 결과적으로 한편으로는 하나의 변수를 정의하면서 또 한편으로는 독립적인 존재를 형성하는 새로운 윤곽의 형태들이 만들어지는 것이다. 이미지-가치에 대한 세밀한 탐색은 관객의 시선을 작업의 한시적이고 접근하기 어려운 곳으로 이끄는데, 이는 구조와 분해의 공간적 대립이 야기하는 결과이기도 하다. 이로 인해 새로운 관계가 성립되면서 이미지의 상태에 대한 숙고를 촉발한다. 증거가 물러난 자리에는 낯선 이미지만이 시선을 집중시킨다. 물질성과 가시성은 부재한 것으로, 바로 이것이 시선을 인도하며, 광범위한 담론을 요구한다.

              오선영,
              큐레이터, APT(Artist Pension Trust) Beijing, Co-Director
 
              형지나,

              코디네이터 


              류은미,

              어시스턴트 코디네이터

 

 

  

Title of the Exhibition: Dancing to the Rhyme

Opening Reception: February 15, 2011 at 5pm

Exhibition Dates: February 16 – March 27, 2011

Venue: Kumho Museum of Art

                             

In this exhibition, there are 13 participating artists; Nayoungim & Gregory Maass (Seoul), Oan Kim (Paris/Seoul),

Jae Oon Rho (Seoul), Christoph Meier (Vienna), Ute Müller (Vienna), Nadim Vardag (Vienna), Jooyeon Park

(London, Seoul), Mladen Bizumic (New Zealand, Vienna and Berlin), Hyunmi Yoo (Seoul), Eunji Cho (Seoul),

Sunah Choi (Berlin), Sunghun Choi + Sunmin Park (Seoul) and Heman Chong (Singapore, New York)

 


 
Dancing to the Rhyme

 

 

Dancing to the Rhyme, an exhibition project to be held at the Kumho Museum of Art from February 16 to March 27, 2011, is about rhymes that are found in images and languages, and the rhythms that these rhymes conjure up.  This exhibition began with the questioning of the role and meaning of a theme in planning a contemporary art exhibition and how diverse works of individual artists in a group exhibition are linked to each other to create a narrative.  In this exhibition, the curator and the participating artists work together to compose a single story and find a rhythm that in the end lead to harmony.

 

This exhibition can be understood as a poem.  The various works featured in the exhibition can be read as the verses of a single poem. Within the poem, we may experience the inner rhythm of each piece, and discover the unique tone of each work that come together under a common theme.  It is like reading a free verse or a prose poem.  Through the exhibition, the curator and the participating artists seek to break down the indifferent gaze of the viewers upon contemporary artworks as well as the wall that blocks these viewers from easily accessing contemporary art, thereby stimulating a sensuous appreciation of the works.  The rhymes and rhythms that are naturally conveyed through this story will lead the audience to sympathize with the flow of the exhibition, and help them to discover contemporary art—often perceived to be difficult to understand and complicated—first through the senses.

 

In this exhibition, the exhibition hall on the first floor speaks about metaphor and imaginary space.  Heman Chong's Walking Long and Hard belongs to the works in which Chong appropriates a historical model from the modern art practice and applies it onto the contemporary modes of thinking, seeing, and feeling.  The reference here is Richard Long's groundbreaking walking performances done in the sixties.  What are left from the original performances of Richard Long are the plain and short cartographic descriptions of the routes that he took.  Chong's transference of the formal properties of these documentations to the present doesn't take place in nature conceived through abstract terms but in a highly urbanized texture charged with psychological tension.  Drifting on the streets is not coined with the rejoicing of mobility but with the feeling of frustration and the will to suffer after a falling out with someone dear.  Christoph Meier's art focuses on the performative and narrative potentials of media.  His proposal for the exhibition is a social sculpture containing different ready-mades with functional, performative or functionally performative skills.  A sculptural arrangement made of museum furniture and everyday objects, these elements form an installation that itself refers to the architectural archetype bar. Rearranged and partly divorced from their original contexts that are called habits, they are reflected in the institutional frame and social guidelines, to be redefined by usage - a welcome performance inviting everybody to join and communicate, no matter what the content.  Jae Oon Rho's Stardate (2010) is a temporal concept that comes from an old sci-fi drama.  ‘Stardate' is an imaginary concept, but it in a way overturns the narrow and linear idea of time that we presently use (the Gregorian calendar), and stimulates the senses toward a more multi-layered idea of time. Through this work, time is recomposed into one that has loopholes everywhere, where the past-present-future are intertwined, and where violence has been banished from our lives but is somehow still preserved.  It is universal rather than terrestrial. The numbers engraved on the tombstone are connected to the artist's personal memories (the artist's birthday and the day his mother passed away), but they may be replaced by the viewer's memory, which may be personal, public, about people or lives that are dead, or linked to a specific period.  Therefore, the numbers may be engraved infinitely.  The possibility for infinite series is the key point of this tombstone object.  Stardate is therefore a condensed interface where the memories of the artist meet and oscillate with the many people that view them.  It also punches a hole in the mad speed and time that drive reality, and announces death in its own way.  Finally, it acts as a sort of a monument that is built to revive the time and memories that have escaped through the hole, hoping that the infinite rhythm and music created by their dance will be able to fill our lives again.

 

On the basement floor, texts are changed to images and Sunghun Choi + Sunmin Park's We Dance on a Rope and Let Me Be Vaguetake on a role of the transition from texts to images.  And continuously, we can see Sunah Choi & Christoph Meier's 2/3/3/6(2011).  This work is the collaborative work for this exhibition between Sunah Choi (based in Berlin) and Christoph Meier (based in Vienna).  The two completed the piece by sending their work to each other through the post, thus finding out about each other's work only after receiving the work in progress.  Without doubt, the two must have been at times pleasantly surprised and at other times dissatisfied with the work of the other.  The two reflected on how to continue the work in a harmonious way and probably were faced to question how the other would react to their own work throughout the collaboration.  The end is not unlike the relationships that we have in life.  The viewer cannot differentiate the authors of the work that started out as six blank pages.  In the end, there is only one artwork.  Jooyeon Park's Untitled (Confetti on Pirate LPs) features the single-color pirate LPs that took the country by storm in their heyday, with paper confetti used during festivals stuck on them.  The solid color LP covers evoke a nostalgia for the thirst of the younger generations of the time for exotic cultures and their desire to own the banned original LPs.  Sunghun Choi+Sunmin Park's daystar ver.1 (2011) is a video installation projected on two separate screens set up side by side.  It is actually a two-channel video, but looks like one single sentence, further elaborated by the works installed around the screens.  Evoking a piece of poetry, the images and logic that constitute the work are wholly the product of the artists' intuition shown throughout the process of observing, discovering, experimenting, judging, and deciding.  The result is a work whereby the viewers can feel on their own and complete the poem as they see fit.

 

The exhibition space on the 3rd floor shows images and texts. Especially, it speaks about the way of expression and the meaning of texts and images.  Hyunmi Yoo's The Self Within (2011) is about the incomplete story of humans on their inner and outer sides.  Viewers are left to complete the story by seeing, reading, and interpreting the images and text (poem) in their own way.  The two-channel video work shows a candle inside a brain and a heart burning up for four hours on the left screen, while on the right screen, a poem composed by the artist herself goes up like subtitles in a film.

        

         The Self Within

 

Sometimes, for no reason at all, my heart beats twice as fast.
It is the sound of the heart of the other self within me.
Long time ago, someone came to see me.
I had never seen her before, but I knew right away who she was.
I had heard much about her, and the things I had gone through because of her were indeed appalling.
She was none other than another me, with uneasy eyes.
Her restless spirit and madness were hard to bear.
She had nowhere to wander any more, and asked me where she could rest a while.
I told her dryly:
“I'll show you a place where you can rest. But once you go in, you will never be able to come out again.”
She hesitated for a moment, but her fatigue got the better of her, and she nodded in agreement.
I looked around and opened my chest. And I put a straw right under my heart and turned on the vacuum cleaner and sucked her inside.
Since then, I have been able to lead a quiet life like other people.
But on days like today when my heart beats twice as fast for no reason,
I remember something that I had forgotten for a while—that I locked up another self within me.
 
Nadim Vardag's Zoetrop (2009) is a 10-frame animation based on a historical photograph from the 1880s that shows an early archetype of the “motion picture”.  By retouching the original photograph and dividing it into a sequence of frames, Vardag reverses the actual function of the apparatus and creates a circular movement.  A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures.  The term zoetrope is from the Greek words "zoe," which means "life," and “τρόπος - tropos,” meaning "turn."  It may be taken to mean the "wheel of life." Eunji Cho's Mud Poem (2011) involves throwing mud lumps at a white gallery wall.  Taking full advantage of the mud's highly viscous and easily shapeable characteristic, Cho creates a new form of vertical land onto which a poem, written in both Korean and English, is projected and from which the text escapes freely.  The exodus begins when the content of the poem migrates to an unknown territory.  Presented for the first time at the Space of Korean Women's History in 2006, it was shown once again at the 2008 Gwangju Biennale.  For the exhibition at the Kumho Museum of Art, a slightly different form of mud poem will be realized.  The Language (2006), one of Cho's action poems, is a three-part music score that improvises onomatopoeic sounds.

 

Exodus_mud poem 

 

Mud and me hatched the plan 
The plan was to escape together during the night
We knew we should help each other
I made a cube with as yet unshaped mud
Then I carried a mud cube with me discreetly
Security people trusted the shape of a mud cube
So they let me pass every border controls

 

Although we helped each other
We knew we were going to be apart
As we have separate paths for our lives

 

When it was the moment to be separated
To wish each other better lives after we are apart
Rather joyfully
I tore apart the mud cube
And threw it
Far away

 

I threw it without mercy
Mud disappeared
With a sound like
‘Puck'

 

For us,
It's life
Not tears

 

 

I step, solitarily, into somewhere I don't know
I don't know where the mud went to
I heard she is well 
Somewhere out there

 

Oan Kim's Useless Series (2008) is probably his most conceptual to date, in which he records insignificant traces of daily life like a kind of photographic scrapbook.  He presents every ‘find' with single word descriptions on their content, thus emphasizing the gap between intellectual perception and visual experience, while creating a poetic association of childishly simple words with often lonely barren images, blurring the boundaries between banality and utter strangeness.

 

The exhibition space on the 2nd floor shows us the shape of deformed objects and reconstruction of the role.  Nayoungim+Gregory Maass will show a range of smaller works titled It is tough world in here (2011), which deals with repetition, rhythm, and pattern, which are essential to language.  Nayoung and Gregory will attach “rhythm” and “rhyme” to their artworks by joining them together and giving them the same movement. The works themselves one by one already deal with this subject.  They will install a still life with fake bricks, two chandelier corners, furniture covered in ceramic cigarettes, a series of black and white photographs of yogic toilet paper still life, and painted empty liquid food kegs, etc.  Sunah Choi's Untitled(Coins) I (2011) features six objects of various sizes and forms made of different metals that are installed under the wall following a specific principle.  The objects have each been produced with their lines, surfaces, forms, and flat and cubic dimensions in consideration.  The objects are made in steel, tin, brass, copper, and aluminum.  These metals are often used in mass production. In order to make coins, different metals are alloyed according to a specific ratio.  On the other hand, for this work, each metal has been conferred an independent form without being mixed. In the abstract sense, the metals have gone through purification, extraction, and transformation in the process of being given forms.  This work focuses on the materiality of coins, revisualizing them in a poetic way.  Abbreviation, metaphor, and analogy have been used as a visual vocabulary in their elaboration.  For Untitled (Coins) II (2011), small holes of various sizes are punched into a piece of laminated wood. The size of the holes corresponds exactly to the sizes of European Euro coins and Korean Won coins.  The holes correspond to the coins in size, but they only evoke the coins that do not actually exist. The laminated wood where the coins no longer exist and which only bear the traces of the coins are sorts of a “negative form.” That negative form dispenses with positive existence, but the traces of the existence that has disappeared end up underlining and even reconstituting the disappeared existence.  Mladen Bizumic's Sometimes Old Sometimes New (1894-2009) is a series of collage-photographs taken from Moderne Neubauten aus Deutschland (Modern New Buildings from Germany) architectural portfolio originally published in 1894.  He bought the portfolio in the antique book shop in Charlottenburg, Berlin because she could not resist its precious, seductive and fragile surfaces rather than its subject matter - the then - new buildings which today either do not exist or are very old.  But he wanted to give it a new life, perform something that happened between the then and the now - something more 'modern,' something that happened in the 20th Century.  Each offprint photograph has been re-cut and re-designed; the added patterns introduce and activate the new space in-between the viewer and the photograph—the past and the present, the 19th Century and the 21st Century.  Suspended in both space and time, they make us wonder: how do we read images in different contexts?  This is an attempt at moving beyond the simple category of 'photography,' and asks us to consider the way we look at pictures. If photography is 'frozen time,' Bizumic wants it to melt and become liquid again.  There is no full stop here, only a comma!  Ute Müller's Untitled(2010) proposes a moment of disappearance, a continuous painting over and repainting of single elements in the course of the pictorial progress that is of central significance.  The unfinished, roughly sketched is set into the picture in the same way that a conventional image is built up.  The motif being detached from a linear narrative context traverses, due to gradual reduction and abstraction, a process towards its individual form.  The result is a new contour, which on the one hand defines a variable, and on the other formulates an independent presence.  The scrutinizing of image-values leads the viewer to the ephemeral and inaccessible in the work. Characteristic of this is the spatial contrast of construction and disintegration. New relations arise, setting in motion a reflection of the status of the image. What is brought into focus is that which withdraws evidence, which confronts us in its strangeness.  Materiality and visibility lead the gaze to the absent, towards this, which demands discursiveness. 
 
 
 
Sunyoung Oh 
Curator, Co-director of APT(Artist Pension Trust), Beijing
 

                  Jina Hyung

                        Coordinator 

 

                        Eunmi Ryu
                        Asistant Coordinator

 

 

Sponsored by