artistic director

Artistic Director

 2013-------------

Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013-The Challenges and Prospects in Art
Period : Dec. 20th, 2013 ~ Jan. 5th, 2014
Venue : Daegu Arts Factory
Organization : Daegu Culture Foundation
Art Director : Okreal Kim
Text : Okreal Kim

Regeneration and Interpretation
of the Memory in the 1970s

Okreal Kim(Art Director of CAI & PURL)

1. Introduction
2. Regeneration and Interpretation of the Memory in the 1970s
    (1) Memory
    (2) Regeneration
    (3) Interpretation
3.Time and space of realization
    (1) Video clips of four artists
    (2) Interviews of eight people
4. The Challenges and Prospects in Art
5. Conclusion

1. Introduction

In Korean art what does ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ that was held in Daegu in the 1970s really means? What meaning does contemporary art of Daegu have? The question is also related to the historical meaning in separating time before the 1970s and after the 1970s. If the 1970s is an important era to talk about contemporary art of Daegu, it is because Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was held in Daegu at that time.

Then, what was the reason why the big festival was held in Daegu in the 1970s? When, where and how did it happen? To answer these questions is to reconsider the potentialities of art in Daegu for the better present and future.

I want to ask a question about how Daegu contemporary art has been developing its own features in Korea that has got a lot of influences from Japan and western culture. Also, I think that it is necessary to think about whether Daegu contemporary art in the present is going in the right direction or not compared to the art in the past. In this global age it is very important for us to understand Daegu contemporary art’s own features and think about the relationship between a region and the world.

Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013 was organized to ask what meaning the 1970s had when we talk about Daegu contemporary art in the continuity of time from the past to the present. Especially, as an art director who was in charge of the exhibition, I focused on documenting what the participating artists said about it.

The subject of the forum that was held for fifteen days from December 20th 2013 to January 5th 2014 after preparing for six months was about challenges and prospects of Daegu contemporary art after the exhibition, Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013 – Regeneration and Interpretation of the Memory in the 1970s. The talk was mainly about the exhibition, but I will discuss my personal opinion that the exhibition, Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 1970, is meaningful because it was an event that made people realize newly about Daegu contemporary art. Also, I will write about the challenges that Daegu contemporary art should overcome and good prospects that it should have, so that I can present the potentialities to have a good vision in the future of art. (*) Contents of the exhibition

<Regeneration and Interpretation of the Memory in the 1970s>

1. Memory – Searching historical data of art in the 1970s.

• Experimental features – making more creative art and form with little restraint
• Immaterialism – pursuing to have a liberal spirit in the influence of monochrome paintings
• New form – trying to have new forms in art
• Critical views – caring more about reality in making art

*Trying to build an archive of data based on studies of Korean contemporary art to prove the existence of artists who worked in Daegu in the 1970s.2. Regeneration – Exhibiting art works made in the 1970s, including pictures, films, etc…

• 1. Getting recommendations from committee members : Selecting 20 artists who worked in Daegu in the 1970s by studying about art at that time and getting memories.
• 2. Having interviews with artists recommended by the committee members and considered from studies about art in the 1970s.

*Searching data, interviewing, and recording – artists who worked during the 1970s, critics, curators, aesthetes, art historian, etc…
*Documenting and exhibiting – Artworks made by artists who pursued to have a liberal spirit, critical view, and creative mind
*The process of searching data and having interviews will be filmed, edited, and shown on a screen.

3. Interpretation – Artists who were born in the 1970s and spent their childhood and adolescence from then

• 1. Painting – 3 -5 artists
• 2. Sculpture and installation – 3-5 artists
• 3. Photography and film – 3-5 artists
• 4. Performance – 1-2 artists

*After selecting artists to participate in the exhibition there will be 2 or 3 types of meeting among the artists, art director and critics.(Recording the process of the second and third meeting)
*Partnership between artists who have been working since the 1970s and those who were born in the 1970s will be needed.

Daegu Art Factory

2. Regeneration and interpretation of the memory in the 1970s

‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013’ was organized to commemorate Daegu contemporary art in the 1970s and see it in different angles, so that Daegu art could proceed in a more futuristic way by reconsidering the historical meaning of it. It started with a question how Korean art in the 1970s is different from art in the 1960s or 1980s.

 This is an important question because Daegu Contemporary Art Festival held in the 1970s (1974-1979[1]), which started in Daegu, became a big art movement that spread rapidly in other regions. It would not have been easy for artists in general, whose individuality was more important than anything else to join in various different groups of artists and have a big art festival together in the 1970s. 

[1] [Re evaluate art of Daegu], (Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, ’74-’79), Exhibitions Organized by Minyoung Park in Daegu Culture and Art Center, 2004: A list of participating artists of  five exhibitions, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival(1974-79) is written

“Daegu was an important city where new artistic trends, such as installation, film, performance were starting while a lot of artists of Seoul were still focusing on making monochrome paintings. Avant-garde artists of Daegu, such as Gangso Lee, Hyeonwook Hwang, Byeongso Choi would invite progressive artists from Busan and Seoul and change a local art event into a big festival that made artists find new ways in art.”[2] It means that Daegu was the center where a lot of new artistic experiments started when artists in other regions were making monochrome paintings in trend.

[2] [History of Korean conceptual art from the 1970s to the 1980s], Honghee Kim, <Hyeonki Park’s film, minimalism in Korea>, 226p. The expression of one’s eyes, 2011

Then, how did ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ in the 1970s become a big festival that a lot of artists participated in? What was the reason why Daegu was the center where artists from other regions flock to? In contemporary art an artist has his or her own way to deal with reality, and it could be very different from other artists even in the same cultural area. The differences should be shared with one another in a healthy way for all artists to build cultural wealth. A human being is an individual that has his or her own personality that can be more unique when being in a group. What meaning did ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ give each one of the participating artists? What kind of role did it take in a group of artists? The exhibition ended well without any trouble, but I still wonder about them.

As I was in middle school and high school in the 1970s, I did not know a lot about the political atmosphere in Korea at that time. I was too young to know well about it, but, finally, I got to hear about it when I was a high school student. Looking back on historical background of Korea in the 1970s, the tension between North Korea and South Korea after war would not have made artists very active when working on their artworks, but it would have been one of the causes for them to make more various kinds of art. We can get to know about it from Avant-garde conceptual artworks and those made by artists belonged to an artists’ association, ‘Making voice about reality’.

I think that it is necessary to re evaluate the historical meaning of how Daegu was perceived in the cultural relationship between the mainstream of art and nonmainstream of art in the circumstance of Korean art that was not really identified. To do so we should collect and document data that has not been discovered and build the history of Daegu contemporary art.

I tried to have interviews with many people to activate what I think was necessary. I wanted to extend the meaning of how art in the 1970s is related to art now by documenting what those artists who worked during the 1970s said about it. Because the prospect of future will be made from the root of the past, it is very important for us to find historical trails for both the present and the future.

Therefore, I had interviews with artists, critics, and owners of galleries who worked during the 1970s to organize the exhibition, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013’, evoking memories of that time. If we keep trying to make efforts to collect historical data, we could link the past to the present and make good archival materials for Daegu contemporary art.

(1)   Memory

The first section of the exhibition, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013’ was organized with artworks done by the deceased. In the symposium of an art magazine, ‘space’, the 1970s was defined as a time that a lot of artists followed new trends in other countries recklessly, and, as a result, they brought about a few standardized forms of art and consider parting and meeting with certain artists important. In the early 1970s artists were interested in materialism of art while they were into idealism in the late 1970s.[3] In the exhibition of Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013 the section of ‘Meomory’ was organized with artworks done by those who were leading groups of Avant-garde artists and those who were pursuing their own ways of creating art.

[3] <The circumstances and the prospects of Korean Contemporary Art>, A symposium where art critcs Il Lee, Gwangsoo Oh, Woohak Yoon participated in, Art magazine, [Space], 1981, June, 26-29p.

A lot of artists in the 1970s started perceiving about new age and worked as an individual or a group. I wanted to point out how they could keep their own characteristics in their works of art when they could have lost them easily and standardized their ways of expression as trends of that time in the process of cultural exchange and sharing art between one individual and a group of artists. Furthermore, it is important for us how artworks of that time should be remembered and re evaluated in the present and the future. This, for me, is one of the meanings of why I categorized the section, ‘Memory’.

 

Exhibition View

<Untitled>, done by an artist, Insik Gwak, is about an infinite space filled with the action of making dots repeatedly. He aspires to make an open space from the process of working on his artwork itself rather than to compose certain forms or make a state of completion. He shows us trails of what he asks himself, a question of what the essence of painting really is. One dot layered on another becomes trails of the process of giving his soul to his work and making it invigorating. The whole process of his drawing repetitive dots is filled with moments of his connecting himself with his artwork and trying to figure out what art is for him.

<Irregularities>, made by Gwangho Park, tells us about the symbolic meaning of two-dimensional space of a painting by contrasting the visual factors of colors and shapes. He wants to talk about the principles of how the universe was created. His way of presenting a space in painting is related to re-forming the rectangular frame of his canvas, sexual symbols shown as if floating in a limited place, and the irregularities of shapes and colors.

<In between>, made from the 1970s to the 1980s, by Dongyeop Lee, who created his own monochrome paintings continuously, is one of monochrome paintings that are covered mainly with white. In 1975 an exhibition, ‘Five Korean artists- five kinds of white’ was organized in Dongkyung gallery to make white as a symbolic color of Korea and set a clear vision of pursuing nonmaterial art and culture by eliminating shape. A series of his monochrome paintings, <In between> shows us emptiness in void and a state of idleness. His pictorial space, which is reduced to white in color, is about impassivity and freedom from all ideas and thoughts.

A painter, Hyangmi Lee shows us trails of paints running down on her canvas and Korean paper. She did experiments with materialistic features of paints in her own pictorial way. One of her works, <Color, itself> is about the effect of paints and the depth of color, alluding to trails of time in a limited space.

<A fish tank on TV>[4] is a moving electronic painting, done by an artist, Hyeonki Park. By filming he captures the inner place and the outer place of a frame and various movements in the continuity of time, so that we can be aware of the preconception of a still image in painting. He asks us ontological questions about reality and illusions in openness of his moving painting.

[4] <A fish tank on TV>, an artwork possessed by the family of the deceased, it is assumed to have been made in 1977, but it’s unknown

*A reference: In the fifth Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in 1979 he exhibited a film in which he put a big mirror vertically in the river, so that he could get the image of the ripples. <A fish tank on TV> was shown in the same exhibition. He visualized a series of TV monitors , <A film of tilting water> in 1979, [History of Korean conceptual art from the 1970s to the 1980s, Honghee Kim, <Hyeonki Park’s film, minimalism in Korea>, 237p.

(2)   Regeneration

I categorized one section as ‘Regeneration’ because I wanted to re evaluate the meaning of art that changed for forty years since the 1970s. For this section I selected artists who created their own artworks even when various kinds of art genre, such as French informel and monochrome painting, were in trend.

Daegu in the 1970s was an important place where an individual’s creation belonged to a big group and developed as an art movement. This kind of art movement could make certain groups of artists powerful and artworks under the influence of certain groups could be standardized. Above all else, it was worrying that understanding painting was getting more conventional when a lot of artists focused on making three-dimensional works and nonmaterial work of art in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Exhibition View

From the 1970s to the early 1980s the walls of galleries in Korea were filled with artworks painted in no shape with neutral colors of grey, white, and brown. This kind of art movement that is called minimalism or monochrome painting was prospering by artists, Seobo Park, Jonghyeon Ha, Kirin Kim, Myeongyoung Choi, Youngwoo Kwon who were in their forties and recognized well in Korea. Monochrome painting in Korea started with individuals firstly, but it became a big art movement since artists who worked on monochrome painting formed ‘Ecole de Seoul’ in 1975.[5] However, it is meaningful that more various art movements were taking place in the exhibition, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’.

[5] [Korean contemporary art 2, a time for the changes and challenges, written by Youngna Kim, published in Yeakyung, 2010, p.274-275

In an article, ‘Re evaluating art in Daegu’, we can find a good statement describing the circumstance of art in Daegu. “Artists who came back to their hometown after graduating school and working for a while in Seoul decided to settle down in Daegu and do experiments with their passion and brevity. Gangso Lee, Hyeonwook Hwang, Byeongso Choi, Hyangmi Lee, Myeongmi Lee participated in exhibitions, such as ‘Expose(gallery of Daegu department store, 1973)’, ‘Inviting modern artists(gallery of Daegu department store, 1973), ‘Korean artists doing experiments(gallery of Daegu department store, 1974) with conceptual and philosophical artworks that were made of experimental materials to go beyond the boundary of painting which was categorized simply as figurative painting and abstract painting.”[6]

[6] [Re evaluate art of Daegu], (Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, ’74-’79), Exhibitions Organized by Minyoung Park in Daegu Culture and Art Center, 2004, p.16-17.

Monochrome painting was in full bloom as a big art movement by a lot of artists because artists of that time absorbed trends from other countries very speedily. It must not have been very easy for them to keep their liberty in a time like the 1970s because they were creating new trend while corresponding to trend of that time. It would have been very difficult like a salmon struggles a lot when coming back to where they were to give a birth. One thing that I am sure of is that Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was possible because of the improved artistic soil that Daegu contemporary art had.

Then, what is the improved artistic soil? In a seminar of Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013, I got to know that the improved artistic soil of Daegu is based on the liveliness in literary circles of the region, Yeongnam.[7] It is also one of the features of art in Daegu. Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was a great event that kept the history of art of Daegu and encouraged artists not to make standardized paintings to win the art competition sponsored by the nation. It took a good role to make art of Daegu very progressive in the 1970s.[8]

[7] [The historical meaning of activities done by groups of artists in Daegu contemporary art], Namhee Park, A thesis for the symposium of 2013 Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, 15p.

[8] [The historical meaning of activities done by groups of artists in Daegu contemporary art], Namhee Park, A thesis for the symposium of 2013 Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, 13p.

Art is a means of rebelling against convention and pursuing new trends, however, it could make artist keep in tradition. In this point of view, it is very important for both an individual and a group of artists to be creative to choose what to keep and what to throw away because the decision that they make could become history. I wanted to talk about history in that sense, and so, I pointed out the true meaning of history by categorizing the section, ‘regeneration’, in which I invited artists who led the exhibition, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’, and those who were open-minded to do various experiments in the boundary of contemporary art even though they did not participate in the exhibition. Most artworks that were shown in the section, ‘regeneration’, were works were aimed to escape from the rectangular canvas of a painting and those that were conceptual and nonmaterial.

After doing experiments with monochrome painting, an artist, Jungho Kwon made works evoking the relationship between life and death by the motif of skulls, and displayed them in the exhibition, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’. Youngjin Kim made objects out of photographs to make us think of the inside and the outside of a picture. One of his artworks, "A stuffed cat", which has trails of forty years, is about the frame of an artwork and the negative and the positive image of a picture. "Layered space between", done by Hodeuk Kim shows us that an act of filling space in a painting could be an act of leaving space as void. Heungju Kim exhibited an artwork, "Untitled", which makes the viewer encounter someone else painted in a mirror by placing a mirror in between the viewer and a painted mirror.

Also, an artist, Mihae Back made her composition by drawing lines on her canvas according to the rules of a traditional Korean game, ‘owning land’, so that she could fill her pictorial space more spontaneously. Hakchul Shin shows us objects titled "Chicken feet", "Circulation" which make us think of the reality in the 1970s. Gangso Lee exhibited a painting, "Emptiness" that has moments of his encompassing the painting along the rhythm of nature. Kunyong Lee did a performance to talk about conditions of art, and as a result, he produced paintings and installation pieces. While a lot of artists focused on making monochrome painiting and thought that the identity of Korean art would be found in monochrome painting, Myeongmi Lee exhibited her work, "Play", and showed the viewers the beauty of various colors. Ufan Lee talked about breathing in nature by putting a dot on his canvas and placing a rock in an art museum. Byeongso Choi showed us fragments of information of newspaper by erasing them with a pencil and a ballpoint pen. He talked about the act of denial and approval as a process of making his work, playing with coincident and inevitability.

As I described above, the section ‘regeneration’ was filled with experimental artworks in which artists’ concern about the age, the 1970s was sublimated as art. Artists keep asking themselves how art becomes life or how life becomes art while making their work of art. They relate the reality to illusionary images and visualize invisible things in their mind, so that they can make their art get involved in their life or make their life art itself. By regenerating the historical place where the distinction between being inside the place and being outside the place is meaningless, I wanted to make the viewers experience the past, the present, and the future in one place.

Exhibition View

(3)   Interpretation

I organized the section, ‘interpretation’ by exhibiting experimental and nonmaterial artworks of a transition period, the 1970s, works that can make a link between the past and the present. I wanted to shed a futuristic vision of art by presenting artworks in the 1970s that have both differences and similarities in the form and the concept when comparing them to works today. Also, I wanted the viewers to appreciate and interpret the artworks as they want although some viewers could notice the subtle differences in the materials that were used in each one of the works.

One of the participating artists of the section, ‘interpretation’, Gyeolsoo Kim used a boat to talk about joys and sorrow of a fisherman’s life through his artwork, "Labor/effectiveness". Youngse Kim tried to make his brushstrokes spontaneously as he once said, “I made a forced landing, but it was not a forced landing because there was no destination in the first place. What he said is a metaphor for the moments when he put paints on his canvas to describe how he makes his work of art. Jongkoo Kim exhibited a landscape painting made of powdered steel. His painting has sad atmosphere like a poem. Paa Sohn exhibited a chair and a book made of a lot of oriental needles, satirizing one’s social standing and knowledge. In his work, "Untitled" is his artistic view of society that makes people tired and frustrated easily. Dongchun Yoon’s "A series of stories" is about adaptation of a story chosen by him while transferring to others through the interaction between the objects and the text he used. Gyojun Lee makes his own time and space by crossing vertical lines and horizontal lines to make shapes and giving order and harmony in his painting. Gyusun Cha makes a unique landscape painting with clay and paints to remind us of man and nature.

Jinseop Yoon’s performance titled "The color of shoes of a woman walking on the street, Dongseong ro" for the opening reception was collaboration with another artist, Kunyong Lee, who walked on a yellow book that Jinseop Yoon placed on the floor. They gave some people things that were yellow and made some other people attach yellow paper on their body. His performance was to get coincidental effects by overlapping the title, ‘the color of shoes of a woman walking on the street, Dongseong ro’.

Exhibition View

3. Time and space of realization

Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013 was an exhibition to commemorate art of Daegu in the 1970s and find the historical meaning of it. It is hard to explain what the time, 1970s means in history of art of Daegu and art of Korea. However, after meeting those artists who participated in the exhibition, I got the feeling that they realized the power of the time and space that made all of them flock to one place and have a big exhibition.

We can find out about how sensational the exhibition was from the titles of newspaper articles at that time. “Daegu Contemporary Art Festival that shows us where avant-garde art now stands (newspaper, Chosun, 1977. 5. 3)”, “Avant-garde art movement spread to local arts (newspaper, Seoul, 1977. 5. 3)”,  “Live art, aspects of Daegu Contemporary Art Festival (newspaper, Seoul, 1978. 9. 26)”, “An experimental outdoor art event in the fourth Daegu Contemporary Art Festival (newspaper, Chosun, 1978. 9. 27.)”, “Contemporary art on a white beach (newspaper, Dong a, 1979. 7. 10)”

Also, there is an important point of view that Daegu Contemporary Art Festival made progressive artists find their own way to go further in Korean art, in which monochrome paintings were in trend at that time. “Daegu Contemporary Art Festival is a big art festival in which over one hundred artists from all of the regions in Korea participated. While artists who worked during the period of the early avant-garde Korean art struggled a lot from the frustrating circumstances of Korea at the time of revitalizing reforms system called’ Yushin’, artworks shown in Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, including art events, performances, seminars, tended to be alienated from the difficult conditions in Korea. Most of the subject matters of the artworks included in the exhibition were about the artists’ concerns in art itself. As a performance art, Gangso Lee would drink on a white beach in the rain and Hyeonki Park drew a shadow of a poplar tree with lime powder. Sungjin Chang showed us the relationship between man and nature by hammering a nail into a tree and hanging his clothes up on the tree. Sangnam Lee would step on the ripples of a river, doing his performance.[9] However, the contents of those news articles tended to consider all of the new trials that were done at that time, including an art movement, ‘informel’, an artists’ association, ‘actuel’, exhibitions of young artists’ association, Korean monochrome paintings experimental.[10]

[9] A research of Korean contemporary art(1960-79), Mikyung Kim, 80-81p. Daegu Contemporary Art Festival that shows us where avant-garde art stands now (an article of a newspaper, Chosun, 1977. 5. 3.)

[10] A research of Korean contemporary art(1960-79), Mikyung Kim, 80-81p. <The reality of avant-garde art>, (an article of a newspaper, Gyeonghyang, 1977. 7. 12)

People might have different opinions when they evaluate ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’. However, it is necessary for us to try to study more about how artists at that time dealt with new trends of art in the difficult circumstances of Korean culture and society. It is because history of Daegu contemporary art could change as how we understand the past and link it to art in the present. Apparently, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival 2013’ was to clarify the true historical meaning of the exhibition, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ held in the 1970s, by presenting witnesses of artists, critics, and curators who got involved in it. It is obvious that Daegu in the 1970s was a place that made artists realize lots of potentialities in art

In some aspects Daegu was like the center of the storm, where artists rebelled against public politics with their art and found their identity as an artist. It was a place where a lot of artistic trends were absorbed in, providing artists a comforting zone. Above all else, it is the most meaningful thing that Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in the 1970s was an event that launched big art festivals in all of the regions of Korea. 

Artists should be awake to perceive reality, so that they can understand the meaning of their existence as an artist and a human being. And the meaning of art from that kind of artistic attitude makes art alive. We need to remember that the active art movements in the 1970s were made by those creative artists who wanted to make sure what they were by making art everywhere, including rivers, fields, etc…

(1) Video clips of four artists

This section is about films made by four artists, Youngjin Kim, Hyeonki Park, Gangso Lee, and Byeongso Choi who gathered in K studio in 1978.[11] I found these films that were missing for a long time, and decided to include them in the exhibition. They were made for the section of ‘video and films’, as a part of the fourth Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in 1978.

[11] It is confirmed by three artists that Youngjin Kim, Hyeonki Park, Gangso Lee, Byeongso Choi gathered in K studio and made films as they wanted. Also, it is confirmed that the deceased artist, Hyeonki Park’s film was made in 1978, not in 1977. 

A film made by Youngjin Kim was about the process of drawing lines of human body that was attach to panes of transparent glass with a pen. This kind of drawings done along the lines of certain parts of body makes people think of various abstract images.

Hyeonki Park made a film that featured images of water that were reflected by light. The image of water in a basket is scattered when the water ripples on its surface. When the water is still, the image becomes clear. He captured reflected images of water to remind us of a real substance and illusions.

Gangso Lee shot a scene of painting on the other side of the panes of glass placed in front of a camera. Scenes of the actions of painting turn white as he makes white brushstrokes on the panes. He makes colorful paintings by coloring the panes with many colors of paints.

Byeongso Choi, in his film, draws repetitive lines on a black board with a white chalk from left to right until the screen is filled with the lines. Then, he starts drawing again from right to left as if erasing what he draws. The act of drawing and erasing lines repeatedly at the same time is like the process of walking all of the steps that a person has to take in his or her life. 

Exhibition view

(2) Interviews with eight people

This section is about interpretation of an archival discussion. It is also the second title of the exhibition, “regeneration and interpretation of the memory in the 1970s.” which makes artists regenerate the time, 1970s and interpret it at the same time by remembering what happened in the past and talking about it while having an interview. I will document important parts of what these eight people said because it is very important in the aspect of re evaluating Daegu and Korean art in the 1970s.

Youngjin Kim

I met some people who were very energetic to make their art, and that encouraged me a lot because I wanted to be a good artist like them. I think that kind of environment stimulates each other. The energy that we shared with one another and conversations that we had while drinking together helped me learning more about art. Of course, we did not drink every night.

I started making installation pieces for forty or fifty years since I stopped making paintings on canvas or paper.

I think there are a lot of artists who hide themselves and make what they want without having a chance to exhibit their works. It is necessary for curators to find these artists and promote their art. Some artists want to be exposed and spotlighted while some other artists want to be hidden, so I think it will make an interesting story if a curator discovers a hidden artist and encourage his or her art.

-          Part of what an artist, Youngjin Kim said while having an interview in his studio in Gyeongju. 2013. 10. 15.

Byeongso Choi

Around the mid 1970s artists who just graduated from their school flocked to Daegu to make new trends. Gangso Lee, Hyeonwook Hwang, Hyeonki Park, and Myeongmi Lee were those artists. After graduating from Joongang university I joined them to break away from the fixed ideas in art. What they were interested in was to make new art, and I liked their attitude and joined them.

I started making my own work in the atmosphere of trying new things, but I didn’t have a job and didn’t have my studio, so I wanted to make something that doesn’t make me spend money, things that I can make without a studio. Then, I found a pen and newspaper. I did not need a studio. I could make my work on my dining table or in a library. That is how my works were created. I wasn’t very interested in art even while I was in university, but I changed and got attracted to art since I met my friends who flocked to Daegu in the mid 1970s after they just graduated from their school. My art was possible because of them.

-          Part of what an artist, Byeongso Choi said while having an interview in his studio in Daegu, 2013. 10. 11

Myungmi Lee

Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in the 1970s was about grouping artists. After some big art festivals like ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ or ‘Seoul Contemporary Art Festival’ ended artists started making their own work. To put it simply, artists showed their works at first as a member of a group as if singing as a duet, trio, and quartet, or in a choir. Then, they started making their own work after getting out of the choir, but there are some people who cannot have a solo concert, and some other people who did have their solo concert, but disappeared into the fog if their works were not impressive.

One of the experimental features of art in the 1970s was young artists’ attitude to rebel against exhibitions sponsored by the nation. It was a rebellion against certain painting circles and, also, a crash in a time of change.

Artists whom I get attracted to are those who want to make something new. They are so into it, so they don’t care about anything else. As an artist I get sympathy with them. They stumble on a narrow path even though they could have chosen to walk comfortably on a broad street. I have love for them because the fact that there is someone who also goes his own way, enduring loneliness and pain is like there once was a man who made a fire in the beginning of human history.

-          Part of what an artist, Myungmi Lee said while having an interview in her studio in Daegu, 2013. 10. 29.

Gangso Lee

During the 1970s there were a lot of changes in contemporary Korean art. At that time it was hard for art students to get information about art trends in other countries. Art in Europe and America was changing rapidly, and the concepts of arts in trend were hard for young artists in East Asia to understand and follow. Because of the lack of information, young artists started gathering in groups to have exhibitions and discussions about contemporary art.

The first Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was held in 1974, and the first Seoul Contemporary Art Festival, Ecole de Seoul were held in 1975. In1976 Busan Contemporary Art Festival was held. Then, the first Junnam Contemporary Art Festival was held in Gwangju and the first Junbook Contemporary art Festival was held in Junju. These local art events helped people understand more about art, but another important thing that happened was that students could get to know about contemporary art movements. I think it took an important role to develop Korean art education. Compared to each one of the countries in East Asia, Japan would be the first country that got influenced by western art, but Korean art developed fast from pre-modern times to modern times

-          Part of what an artist, Gangso Lee said while having an interview in his studio in Ansung, 2013. 10. 29.

Kunyong Lee

Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was held in Gangjeong where art of Daegu extended its realm further in openness. A lot of art movements happened mostly in cities, they were starting to occur in the suburbs of Daegu city. So, artists started a new tradition to make art in nature, and ‘outer art’ was the name of the tradition named by young artists after Daegu Contemporary Art Festival stopped. Daegu Contemporary Art Festival made Korean art more eventful and interesting. I think it is important in the history of Korean art.

There was little to be consid

ered as culture in the 1970s. So, young students at that time were enthusiastic to experience new things even though they hardly understood about the seminar that they attended to. Around 1975 I started doing performance that was very eventful in art, since then a lot of   artistic events happened. I participated in the second Daegu Contemporary Art Festival and had a performance in Gyemyeong university. At that time, I was the only one who was doing a performance, and it seemed like the art festival was held only to show people my performance, but things changed and lots of people started doing their own performances and I had to wait for my turn since 1977. The performances were sensational, not because they were new but because more artists started seeking philosophical meaning of why they were doing performances.

Performance happening outdoor connects the audience to nature and makes certain forms as the artist planned, so that the audience can get the feeling that they got involved in the art. Art as a performance or an event cannot be shared if there is no audience to share it with in the right spot where it happens.

-          Part of what an artist, Kunyong Lee said while having an interview in his studio in Gunsan, 2013. 10. 17.

Seokwon Chang

I did a performance called ‘an event of marriage’ in Seoul gallery in 1977 after I finished graduate school. The wedding was led by an artist, Kunyong Lee. I participated in ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ and ‘Gwangju Contemporary Art Festival’ after I got spotlighted as a performer from mass media.

In my opinion the 1970s was like a textbook in the history of Korean art. It’s a standard sample. A sample should be thrown away after its role ended. People should be aware of the importance of the exhibition and realize that it contributed to the growth of Korean art. Then, it should be set aside because a textbook is just a reference for us to go one step further. It should not be a destination for the next generation. It should be thrown away, so that new artists can find a new direction. The problem is when we should throw it away. I think we could throw it away when we get a more important card. To throw it away we should know what Korean art really means and how art in the world circulates. If you could throw it away, you will be really creative. I think artists should study art and have more discussions with each other and pay attention to reality and the future. I hope this exhibition could be like a textbook for artists in the present and the future.

-          Part of what a professor, Seokwon Chang said while having an interview in his office in Junnam University, 2013. 11. 30.

Junghee Lee

A lot of artists in Korea got out of the art scene except those who won the art competition sponsored by the nation until the early 1970s. A lot of artist’s associations were made and disappeared until Daegu Contemporary Art Festival made big art movements spread to all of the regions in Korea. Then, people started trying to find our own beauty as Koreans. I think it was possible because people started perceiving how important it is to have our own spirit in art. And that is how monochrome paintings were in full bloom in Korea at that time. They were exhibited even in Japan.

Japanese critics point out that the white painted on Korean monochrome paintings is not white that is categorized as a color. They say that it is Koreans’ life and spirit. Korean artists who made monochrome paintings at that time finally perceived that their paintings were really about being a Korean after Japanese people acknowledged about the uniqueness of white in Korean monochrome paintings. That is how they got to know about their paintings and how their paintings got in trend internationally.

In my opinion it will be a trend for artists to harmonize in collectivization while small groups of artists were divided through regions and different ideologies in the 1960s and the 1970s. Small groups of artists were formed and disappeared soon while people relied on ideologies, but, now, artists don’t care about ideologies any more. They care more about technical ways of how they visualize what they want in the current of the times. However, I want artists in these days to have their own spirit in making their work of art because artists in the future will not need to rely on technology. If they make an artwork made only of technology, it should not be called a work of art. It is something made of industry. Contemporary art does not require artists to have techniques. It is more important for artists to have the right spirit.

-          Part of what a professor, Junghee Lee said while having an interview in his office in Keimyung university, 2013. 10. 22.

Taesoo Kim

I went to Keimyung university to see the exhibition, Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in the 1974 and the 1975. I remember that I had a spicy fish soup or a white chicken soup there when it was held in Gangjeong. At that time I didn’t fully understand the exhibition because I wasn’t familiar with avant-garde art although I was interested in it. People didn’t care about art because they were not interested in it although artists in Daegu already were very active to make Daegu the right environment for their art. People didn’t know how to see and interpret a painting in my gallery. At that time people were clueless about what art is.

I think that ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ was led by artists, Gangso Lee, Hyeonki Park, Young jin Kim. The most impressive artist among them was Hyeonki Park. He was very unique. He always thought of something that people could not imagine. He made films and did performances. He loaded a gigantic rock in a truck and drove on the streets of Daegu. I still remember how people saw him, their facial expression! In 1981 he exhibited some pictures of the happening and the rock in my gallery after breaking down the wall of my gallery. I joined him because it was new, not like a still life painting or a landscape painting. I wanted people to know about it!

-          Part of what the owner of Maekhyang gallery, Taesoo Kim said while having an interview, 2013. 10. 26.

I realized again the importance of documenting while recording what these people said about the 1970s. It is easy for artists and critics to study western art because there is access to it. However, more studies about artists in Daegu and Korea are needed to share our art with more people in the world. I hope more studies about Daegu artists should be done and translated in other languages, so that people in other countries can get to know about Korean art and spirit. I think it is important for local art to be international.

4. The challenges and prospects in art

I realized while preparing for the exhibition, <Regeneration and interpretation of the memory in the 1970s> why the right role of curators and having critiques in the right spot where art is created are so important. Above all else it is important to be aware of the boundary between things that should be thrown away and things that we should keep. We need to try new things by throwing away the wrong attitude to see the world differently. I think that developing contents for creating art and appreciating art is necessary for Daegu Contemporary Art Festival to be continued and stand for Korean art.

“Change in art might be possible by an individual, but it is important for us to share what we think and cooperate with each other. It is really hard for a lot of artists to reach the same direction because two artists can be very different from each other. That is why more conversations are needed to respect each other. Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was made as a big art festival by artists who cared a lot about each other and art in Daegu. (Gangso Lee, part of the interview)

I see the prospects of Daegu art in what he said. Like he said, we need to have more conversations that make artists respect and encourage each other, so that they can find their identity as an artist and keep making artworks even though they may struggle a lot to live as an artist. If we support that kind of artists, the future of Daegu art is bright. As ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival’ was possible because of the efforts that each one of the artists who participated in the exhibition made, not because of one great artist in the 1970s. We should treat artists well and support them heartily for the present and the better future of art.

5. Conclusion

Many people have been studying a lot about the transitional period of Daegu contemporary art from the 1960s to 1970s to find the root of art in Daegu and Korea. We need to find out the meaning of local arts by collecting data about certain times that can be shared and study art continuously and vigorously. These conditions of art in the 21C are needed when you live a nomadic life in the global age.

Also, ‘Daegu Contemporary Art Festival should be a great chance for us to go beyond the past and to make the bright future. Cultural venues like art schools, museums and art foundations for funding should have good environmental conditions to make the circulation of creating art and appreciating art smooth. If my suggestions come true, great artists will be born in Daegu, which is not a city known for art like Paris and New York. The exhibition, Daegu Contemporary Art Festival was a national art festival held in the 1970s. In 2014 we should have an international art exhibition in Daegu. That is the meaning of the exhibition, Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in 1970s.
 

Dec. 20th, 2013
Artistic Director Okreal Kim

2013----------------------------------------

The second anniversary show, 1^st part 2013

Body, Being Here

Period : Feb. 26th ~  June 26th, 2013

Venue : Daegu Art Museum

Guest Curator : Okreal Kim
Text : Okreal Kim

 

1.

Body in itself qua existence remains individualised, while it communicates organically with the physical environment and cultural conditions, making this external affaire ‘existence immanent in the world’. A hackneyed subject of discussion, but a life’s persisting question: are humans living through and via flesh born or created? The entire genealogy of human history is maintained through this subject of discussion, from the Ancient World, bearing the ultimate question in philosophy. Perhaps a thread of verity can be found in the fact that, as adequately put by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, living human being communicate as “corps vivant”.

As was generally favoured by many ancient scholars and commentators, Platon’s idea of regarding “the body as the prison of the soul” immediately implies that the death of body does not entail the same consequence for the soul. Aristotle argued independently that the soul cannot exist without the body, but is not of any bodily kind, while “the soul is the actuality (eidos) of the body, while the body is potentiality (hule) of the former. The modern history of Western philosophy witnessed René Descartes’s discourse on the matter of body, as he famously accounted for the relationship as that between ‘skipper and the ship’. The soul and hule were separate from each other, while the soul of the mind works not from non-voluntariness, but voluntary movement which participates in the manipulation of the organic, stating that “human soul can determine the movement of the animal spirits in the body so as to perform voluntary acts”.

Baruch de Spinoza, a contemporary of Descartes, adhered to Dualist stance concerning ontology, but cognitively, his Monist viewpoint was that body and mind is thought through the traits of extension(object), but also equally adequately in the traits of thinking/reasoning. The next major change in thinking the concept of body came later from Friedrich Nietzsche, giving to the body the authority of reason itself. In the first part of <Thus Spoke Zarathustra>, the German philosopher writes: “The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.”

In reading various discourses on the matter of body, the attempt to enlighten oneself through stories by or on great philosophers may prove insufficient, or even more insufficiency than the questions answered. The author’s ignorance or one’s idle curiosity can thus be likened to an impossible puzzle. From my point of view, this is my third exhibition on the concept of body, the first and second being ‘The Modern Mythology – Body and language’ in 1999 and ‘Soma Condition’ for which the preparation began in 2005 and its subsequent showcase in 2006 respectively. In retrospect, if the initial questions raised in the first two exhibitions were to be revised and re-thought, the essential question that requires the apprehension of all the others is “just what sort of criteria should one, be using to understand the present?” The commonplace thought on this would be to place ‘present’ in-between the past and the future, while what we live in directly engaged in the present, always in the frame of ‘today’, as yester day is the past, tomorrow is the future.

Our status quo in the present nevertheless remains non-comprisable with the past and the future. The above question essentially stages this problem of probing into the possibility of the connection between the two. It is one’s body that lies in-between. Could it be the case that, is my body comprehends both my yester times and the future, today just doesn’t exist between the past and the future? If the body never remains static in any real terms, this candid question of mine is the spatio-temporal lieu that connects the two. Another way to put it would be that the sole way in which the past and the future can be taken into the present is to wholly separate the two. And if not, the moment of existence of the living body is the place of convergence of the past and the future. Thus the living body stands ipso facto right in the midst of their opposition.

Thinkers, be it from the Ancient or Modern times, have produced largely differing questions and opinions on the concept of ‘body’. Into the 20th Century, it has more recently become an experimental platform, both in the quotidius and in artistic life. Human beings establish organic connections and respond to social demands, aspiring towards developmental, creative changes through active willingness. Having introduced into the present century the bodily imagination that transcends communicative norms, bodies have now been more deterritorialised. Bodies now compete for superiority, both in physical and hierarchical sense, as some of Korean neologisms suggest: "몸짱" (pronounced Momm-Jjang) or "얼짱" (pronounces Eul-Jjang, meaning “diesel or buff” in physique or look). Media transforming along with commercialism sees the body as consumable, susceptible to be re-made or composed anew, the process of which is decorated with sugarcoated brand names or images. This latter of exaggerated signs is nonchalantly consumed by people, engendering the social obsession which in turn makes ourselves consume and even restrain bodily mechanisms to compete.

The commentary of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard on the bodily relationship subject to production and consumption can be a pertinent reminder: the body of production and consumption has the body itself to be subject to consumption, the derivative real appearing more real than the real itself, meaning the consumer object is the ‘body itself which has become an object of salvation’. The salvation of body is needed more than ever in our era. But if the faux, more real than the real, where reality and virtual reality cannot easily be distinguished, how can such salvation be possible?

‘Body’ is conveyed and passed on in the form of various images, multiplied or redoubled to satisfy the secret minds. Simulacrum, the unit able to be multiplied ad infinitum, which constitutes ‘hyper-reality’, brings about the fanatic celebration of preferred signals, in a reality where images are the sole medium of communication. Luxury products or celebrity figures are imitated in images, replacing the real qua limit. Images, favoured over the real of the reality, are easily assumed by preferences of the public, hence the real being forgotten and leaving only the image on the surface. Multimedia technology has contributed to the readily communicated messages, while making clear the contrast of light and shadows, the sense of which is beyond our conscious reach. The preferred signals are exchanged and the society changes its appearance accordingly. Exchange rate disparity and the comparison of their monetary regimes can allow for augmentation of a value-power, hence more purchasing power can arise to change our body shape, sexier yet more of the same, where multiple and redoubled bodies can be and are made in our era.

The veil that has long concealed the real of the body (or that of Venus, which had been covering the feminine body, or the ideal form of body that rule out pathos in favour of certain religious ideal), is removed by History, but only to be replaced by another, that of simulacra-image that remains anonymous, presupposed multiplicity and reproducibility as it circulates. In the midst of all this, what should the body, the fundamental ground of communication, bear as message? If Mind(soul) is in any ways dependent on the body, it carries the most primordial value within each individual body, thereby a vivid lieu of perception, what Merleau-Ponty calls “le champ phénoménal(phenomenal field)”, or what Henri Bergson saw as living vital life endowed with potentialities allowing for values to be expanded. Our body is the point of departure for all subject-object relations, the point of encounter through perception. This is precisely the reason why body is that from which the search for life value should start. My body is in this sense my real self and it is through the body that I respond to the surroundings. As the response and the perception take place, the ‘élan vital’ occurs to give creative evolution, and communicative initiatives.

The focus of ‘Body, Being Here’ is on showing the thoughts of artists, arising from their visual language and visions on our contemporary changes and reflections, through different media such as paintings, sculptures, installations, photos and video works. The underlying concept of body is ‘vital lieu of perception’, as well as medium mediating the world and the self, the most concrete, realistic mode of being in life: the soil where grow out thoughts and deeds, the point of encounter between myself and others, the point which renders the above questions one of the most fundamentally important. Between the past and the future, what is “self” and to whom do I belong? This exhibition will provide the right platform to discover the answers to these persisting questions.

2.

The exhibition ‘Body, Being Here’ marks the second anniversary of Daegu Art Museum, and is organised to seek opportunities to communicate afresh with the world through the body of ‘I’ or ‘you’, with each inherent art of contemporary endeavour, being ‘here at present’. It will allow for seeing and sensing the body as the entity of convergence between the past and the future to expand the boundaries of perception, the main focus to be achieved.

The general compositional plan of the exhibition divides the space into 4 sections. The first section is laid out on the second floor (Exhibition Room 3) where walls of transparent glass are overlaid to give direct visual access to the natural background of the exterior. On the one side is a landscape of mountains and trees, while onto the right, the skylight ceiling (sunken garden) towards the entry point receives as much natural light as it is permited. This particular exhibition space is filled by the Indian artist Tallur L.N and Lee Woo (who is based in Daegu himself), presenting their works with a dividing wall between them, hence proposing a double meaning on the concept of body. It is also equivalent to the head of the body, meaning the most sophisticated, yet, given the congenial metaphor, intermediate between body-mind relations. The works exhibited here deal with dichotomies of mind and material, inherent sense of being and external objects, in the dimension of perceived reality (referring to Tallur’s ‘E=MC² partⅡ’), experiential and phenomenal. And (as Lee Woo’s ‘Boundless Body’ demonstrates) the sublative opposition between body and mind and ‘transcending the body’ from meditative stance are also subject to our attention.


Tallur L.N.

 

Tallur L.N.’s work stages the equipollence immanent in the natural and the artificial, and the unbalance between abundance and lack in social, cultural situations and economic and political reality. His 2006 piece <Hang over> permits the surface similarities to a human body shape by binding coconut shells together, symbolically standing for human and nature. The assumed guises remind us of phenomena and memories from being in the modern society, experienced both as body in nature and as body in society. If work of art is to be understood as a way of projecting the artist’s memories of reality experience onto a set of objects, it would alos be pertinent to the way in which Tallur locates the energy existing between images and materiality and displaces it into the chinks in socio-cultural arena. This stance makes it clear the projection of understanding and critique of excessive unbalancedness in the contemporary era. Another work of Tallur is ‘E=MC² partⅡ’, exposing from object-material relations the nature’s connection with the body, such as gravitational mass, introducing the famous formula of Einstein. The pair formally and strategically points at ‘here at this very moment’, springing from the artist’s intention, which stands between human body and nature, life and death, static present and past memories. The natural light, one of the elements to be concerned with in visual terms, here plays less part than the work-background contrast, in such an open exhibition space that amplifies the constract, although the main point of appreciation lies on the room walls.


Lee Woo

Since 2000, Lee Woo combines video, electronic devices and components for his experimental installations. The Far-Eastern philosophy, such as that of Zhuang-zi, is taken in a new light of digital media technology. This process of creation results in a series of installations baptised ‘cyber-butterfly dream’. Lee Woo has been much occupied with the implications of the symbolic image in different contexts: in the East as well as in the Western civilisations, the past and the future, between body and mind, leading to the third perspective of cyborg and subsequently to the integration of body and machine or extension of body: for this particular occasion, the showing of ‘Boundless Body’ in a conformal correspondence with Tallur. Lee Woo presents an assemblance of 600 seated statues in the Universe, subsuming their bodily boundaries in meditation. This meditation is absorbed by and assimilated into the bamboo-filled anonymous environment surrounding his Cheongdo studio. Here each fragmented image is drawn from and informed by daily life and the unconscious memories. The quiet anxiety from how one feels during the day is embodied in the work’s bodily shapes, as if confined in a secluded studio. The brushing bamboo leaves and the tinkling of wind-bell sets an infinitely fine line between the reality and the imaginary, with a soundless wash-away of impurity. This fine border is symbolised by the 600 statues, half of which is fabricated by the artist, the other half by the participating audience during the term of exhibition. Exhibition Room 3 reflects an image of light and shadows, laying comprehensively the gap between the past and the future. Through the linkage of body and mind, human and nature, society and environment, thoughts on our body as life existence is reflected, bright yet profound, in installations, sculptures and videos.

Section 2, dubbed ‘sunken garden’ due to its sunlight ceiling, links Exhibition Room 3 and 2 crossing between the exterior and the internal space to create an intensive display and effects. The available light coming in through the crossing area allows for a multi-dimensional installation, providing in turn a platform for works that connect the ceiling and the ground.



 
Lim Hyunlak 

Lim, who has the background in Korean traditional painting, performs his “Il-cho Soomook(one-second Indian Ink piece)”. Meanwhile, the delicate single-stroke painting of his “Wild Herb” series sublimely and naturally promotes the beauty of space, in the form of installation. The latter work in the abovementioned scuttled space (9x9x6.6m), individually worked in ink painting fashion, expands bi-dimensionality into a multiple dimension, thereby into the modernity and experimental possibilities of Korean painting, in the body-mind relationship. One second of pure concentrated stroke is fully sublimated into the temporal unit of breath. This is a way of conceptualising actio-temporality which takes to the resonance of act, to the field of perception that connects our body to the mind. The epiphany of perception is always already conducted through the mind. “Il-cho Soomook” is a product of infinitely short instantaneous gesture in a shared field of sensibility where ‘you’ and ‘I’ encounter. ‘The single breath acting upon the gestural stroke qua body’s physicality’ being the artist’s aesthetic stance, his works <Trees stand (Namudeul Seoda)> and <Il-cho Soomook> take the vitality of wild flora to a simple act of respiration in a sense of unity. The artist adds: “the ultimate point of this work is to expand the boundaries of installation not only towards exhibition space but also urban areas, theatrical stage, as a part of the endeavour to breath and plant refined traditional artistry. Breath is life.” One desirable effect of this exhibition would be the spiritual cure of the audience.  

3.

Section 3 takes place in 4-part Exhibition Room 2. Kim Geonye and Suzuki Ryoko, Hwang Ouchul, Seo Oksoon, Choo Jongwan and Shin Sunghwan will be featured. Together they will offer a collective endeavour that alludes to an affective débouché to a fuller realm of perception, through various modes of expression (painting, sculpture, video, installations, photography and film), showing bodily memory seen from bodily encounters in the emotional cycle that crosses joy, sadness, love and repression. The first space in Exhibition Room 2 will feature painted works by Kim Geonye and photos by Suzuki Ryoko, which in an ensemble investigate sexual images of women seen by the society.

KIM GeonYe

 

Kim uses ‘grid’, kernel to his past œuvre, but this time with a different intention. In the case of this exhibition, he only used the example of woman. But the artist insists on the universality, that is for both socially designated sexes, of unseen social repressions, which makes everyone subject to relational restraint. The sign of this restraint is shown by half-naked women, anonymous in identity, but without the usual presupposition of male gaze or sexual repression. A body entangled in strung pearls, hiding the primordial shames with leaves or draping certain body parts in white or blue cloth; in other words, allowing the minimum precipitation of signifiers for its objectivity, their faces in a mannequin-like, nonchalant absence of expression. These bodies are, metaphorically put, standing on a bridge of oblivion: their machinely emotion or barren city is reflected onto our view, where the image of the city and figures float aimlessly in the void. Rather than focusing on the issues of psychological repression or the image of sex, the artist attempts to show the coded fundamental which surfaces them: absence of facial expression, minimum displacement of meaning, vectors of movement that internalise the surrounding exhibition space, all while flattening our perceptional depth upon the sensitive texture of figures. The body as expressed here gives the impression of all elements being shut inside a wall, following the lead of already passed brushes, in a complexe relationship between the direction of light, light contrast, colour intensity, placement of figures and the dynamics with the background.


Ryoko SUZUKI

 

For Suzuki, the concept of visage is a subtle social indicator, which is herself as an artist with a firm individual identity. The revelation of the face is at the forefront of perception of the body, in a revelation of her own, in the view of communicative encounters. She merges her face with the body of man or graphically produced nude, which divides the subjectivity and at the same time presents them as one. The series at the exhibition, named <I am…>, consists of 8 works. The artist creates a male body uncannily fusioned with her own face, the third body seen through photo-like images. The divided, fragmented self of the modern times is the place of perception that breaks out from a clash between personal and social desires. It concretely and plainly shows the symbolic meaning that artificial, fictional cultural code bears. This visually evident image, creating a symbolic gap between what we see and how we are trained to see is one of the products of manipulated counterfeit, a virtual dummy. This twisted meaning can replace the body itself via such paradox, fantasy workable between the usual and the strange. This leads to a sort of post-gender (the gender trouble, multiple identities) that deconstructs the meaning of sex.


HWANG OuChul

 

Deeply ingrained in Hwang’s writings, drawings and films is his ‘now, here’ proper. His film work (in collaboration with Wen Shing Ho) boasts his artistic zeal, while <Gaedari Chumggun (Dog-legged Dancer)> in continuity format, each of 132 works of his measuring 34.8x27.3cm. The movie portrays him alongside with his childhood mates and their experience of growing pain which, noticeable or not, deepens as their body go through physical and emotional pain of life. The past constitutes the present is repeated through the irresistible yearning, remembering still that our body and mind escape our own control. The past is fossilised, resembling more and more the first love, therefore can be better rememebered with eyes closed as our body becomes more and more immersed in the thick of the augmented reality. The artist awakens the blurred layers of memory, including those lost or hollowed by the passion of the younger self. Creating becomes discovery, while memory is reawaken through bloody sensibility at a cross vein to discover that something one’s been trying so hard to remember. The past is then reconstructed in the present, and the present alike in the future; if this reconstruction revolves around the subject of the memory, the particular past commemorated becomes a present that everyone can feel. His robustness strides to yield ‘leap of life’ as his search continues to go deep down the unconscious. This is a new challenge for those who are prepared to cast off their skin. Deeply ingrained in Hwang’s "Gaedari Chumggun (Dog-legged Dancer)" is his ‘now, here’ proper.


CHOO JongWan

In Choo’s work, the limit for self-portrayal is tightly stretched and the form of the portrayed redefines the Grotesque. If the body minus a head portrayed in his earlier works is a struggle in a lapse into the profondeur, he prints intact his face and crumples it to distort his self-portrait, which also has its universality based on others living the same era. This is perhaps the flipside of how we take and manipulate our own face, to change one’s own look according to personal preferences, consigning to oblivion the impossibility of changing them in real terms, floating in the strait that can only be crossed as anonymous. The artist, for this occasion, uses ‘ID pictures’ to create a series of self-portraits, which are then twisted, crumpled and distorted all while showing the apparent impossibility of non-manipulable existence as such in life. Choo then sets a clear border between symbolic identity and existence, as he multiplies this self-portrait for a series that can only function as détour that revolves around the desired real. His 3-D work is a 2-metre-tall group-body series, usually consisting of black and white elements and bringing together the "Tal(탈, 脫, meaning “fling off”)-Emergence" series that so much animated his previous exhibitions. The artist contemplates hard to weigh his body as existential being and solitude. This contemplation however is now longer viable when the imagination takes the liberty of its own involvement, in other words, when it separates itself from the reality. The artist’s sole choice is to concentrate on this gap between the reality and the imagination, between the body and the mind. This gap is symbolised on the canvas by large faces, distorted self-portraits, while integrating also ‘my’ and ‘your’ portrait, recognizing both the transcendence and the heteronomy of the others: becoming a large group portraits.


SEO OkSoon

Seo Oksoon uses procedural means that are openly feminist and construct a particular narrative structure; thread and needlework. This is a self-psychotherapy material and its repetitive consumption that would gradually cure her from negative memories from her adolescence and maintain equanimity while also bringing back positive feelings to the present. Her thread and needle are then the agent of cure which links the psychological guarantee with her artistic modus operandi. For the occasion of this exhibition, "Body, Being Here", this is exactly what she is trying to achieve, in threading, working needles and erasing their traces with soft manœuvre of brush. This act can perhaps be likened to washing up one’s face and putting on make-up, only to erase it later in the day and eventually to repeat the whole process again and again, along a continuous timeline and allowing for imbrication of other event-times in a designated spatiality. This is the point where contingency and necessity criss-cross. The artist keeps records of her own account through repetition and thereby the ensuing psychological changes. It may look as if it is conceptually linked to her previous works, but the new frontier is met by involving performative elements which are embodies by palpable, sensitive textures of mixed media (cotton, cloth or thread). The repressed has to return, but through this medium that gives a positive turn to our reference (the sentiment being treated), to aim for a state of catharsis.


SHIN SungHwan

 
Shin Sunghwan’s main theme is ‘Dream and voyage, communication, life and memory’. ‘Dream and voyage’ is a meditation on human existence; ‘life’ stands for production and annihilation, capturing of a moment in the midst of endless changes, between light and darkness. He makes a paradoxical, coded use of our contemporary reality, our vision deeply affected by media blitz. Such paradox is what brings back to life the lost dreams and incidentally new memories about life itself. He invites and manœuvres light to summon dry, machinic light and make it fluid. 'sur-PEACE' makes a clever use of transparent water tank, water, OHP and LiveCam to translate their combined properties into meditation on light, colour and image. Our perceptual consciousness, run in by monitor recreations of images, is here attempted to be objectivised through properties of matter and image-making process. It is also to sensibilise and makes a diagnosis for oneself in order to reveal multiple layers of media influences on our body. Followed by this deconstructive measure is maximisation of individual meanings of each layers of image or sound. The word ‘sound’, ‘colour’ and ‘movement’ are endowed with different range of meaning as they are understood and used individually. In the same sense, these images and material and colours entail their own range of meaning as they are perceived independently. ‘Dream and voyage’ contemplate on themselves in existence, through production and annihilation, and find where their meanings belong in the present. The childhood experience of drawing on the ground is now re-lived through manipulation of light. The media signal in his work is used to sensibilise and to pave the way to communicate.


Section 4 is presented in the form of archive for viewing. The picture archives are meant to make the visiting public more aware of the process of making of artwork concerned in this exhibition. This part includes artist interviews and images showing the process of creation, viewing them in toto to connect artists’ engagement and people’s appreciation. There will also be a performance symbolically staging the meaning and motive of creation and the process of making, accompanied by a short video display. There are also two programs for public participation. Lee Woo presents 600 statues in one of his works, half of which is fabricated by the artist, the other incomplete half by the participating audience during the term of exhibition; while Shin Sunghwan attracts people’s attention by his ‘light drawing’. The latter focuses on and explores the possibility of perceiving oneself through the traces of one’s own act of manipulating light, seeing one’s ‘now’ in spatio-temporal conditions set by the artist.

Our body, a totalizing field that integrates diverse phenomenological elements emerging from social relations, history and culture, contains as one of its properties the magical machine that mediates it through senses and reason: memory. This system evokes and re-evokes emotional scars and the repressed, but can also bring about cure through the same mechanism. <Body, Being Here> as a curatorial subject is not to develop new philosophical discourses and ask unprecedented questions on the notion of body, but to portray the body as present protruding from the past and the future. It is incessantly becoming past and always already contains and realises time while being a ‘place’, ‘here and now’. The body as present always encounters, makes contact, embodies memories. Body-being-here, as field of perception, awaiting ‘yet-to-be-future’ and ‘already-not-past’ cannot escape the ambivalence between the two states and creates the field where pure perception and lived memories converge. The exhibition, I hope, marking the second anniversary of Daegu Art Museum, will successfully integrate the subject matter with the physical exhibition space, to meet and feel the present as body.

Feb. 26th, 2013
Artistic Director Okreal Kim

2012----------------------------------------

Nomadic Imagination

Art Director : Okreal Kim
Text : Okreal Kim

■General Concept

Now the world lies in an era of expanding the national boundary among the countries, through immediately online communication. In the ear of limitless communication and open information, as much multiplying communication as, it is necessary for us to ask ourselves how to live and overcome personal limitations. In the age of limitless duplication of the image replicated without the original, we have been enslaved in the flood of multiplied limitless images, not distinguishing between real and fake.

It is only 'Nomadic Imagination' that is up by criticizing neither primitive, natural man nor urbanite in life, or possibly to a floating mechanical sensitivity in a virtual space, with crossing the true and the false boundary. This project plans to evoke 'Nomadic Imagination' abused in the cyber territories, which expend simulacre not to be derived by the reality, by highlighting the exhibition and the discourse of the issue.
Like the fly caught in a web, paradoxically, in the 21st century modern people become more passive machine in the working of the smart machine. This paradox life lies on the border of reality and the virtual trapped by much information network floating with not the body but image. In this boundary, the human sense to communicate and breathe is going the more passive stranger, the farther the essential information. "Exhibition and Symposium - Nomadic Imagination" not only asks the time when to be spontaneous thinking and creative practice in flooding of image not verified with the loss of identity, but also try the recovery of the human emotion by the hard creative work. This exhibition aims to practice 'body replay', which thinks the body through the photos, pictures, and the installation and video, for 'Nomadic Imagination' where the apparition is drifting in the absence of the body, considering the contemporary reality becoming passive information and repetitive consumers.


"Exhibition and Symposium - Nomadic Imagination" has a practical reaction of the aesthetics, 'the learning of the sensory perception' for practicing rather than a large discourse. This project is a plan for fulfilling the creation and theory meeting, the boundaries beyond genres, and the virtual and the real-life encounter with the senses with the real breathing of practical and productive discourse.

I

-SEE, WEAR, STRIP-

■ General Plan
Thema ; Nomadic Imagination
Supervision / Organizer ; KRIFI / CAIKOR
Art Director ; Okreal Kim
Exhibition Period ; 2012 . 8. 30~ 2012. 9 .16
Exhibition Place ; Korea Fashion Center, Daegu
Staff ; Jung Myoung, Christina Jeong, Elia Kragerud
Artists ; Nic & Sim, Jelena Vasiljev, Owen Kwon, Geony Kim, Oksoon Seo, Booyun Choi
Event ; Symposium , Aug. 30, 2012

Exhibition Intention and purpose
Above all, [Exhibition and Symposium] of the project communicates with artists in Daegu, theorists, curators working in the field and experts in various field of study, composing 'exhibition and discourse' at the same time. For the formation of discourse, discussions and exhibition are tried to prepare the place of an opening discourse in their respective positions for the flowing contemporary art such as creation, theory and appreciation. In 2011 the theme, 'the techniques of temptation' was conducted three times, in which artists in Daegu and abroad participate in. And young curators working in Germany, theorists in other areas, curators and artists made presentation and discussion at three symposia, having vitality in Daegu art world. The project for three months from July until the end of September was available by making an effort and volunteer organizer.

The 2nd Exhibition and Symposium approaches a more textured structure and content, and it enables an international network and diverse accommodation to expand, push fully cooperating with other sectors to form the foundation. So, with Korea Fashion Center sharing ideas, cooperate for the developing work.
In 2012 [Exhibition and Symposium], 'exhibition and discourse' is compromised by the artist working in Daegu and abroad, the curator in residency while living and working together through workshops. Rather than the project is the completed exhibition of the form, it is continuing from the first meeting to last data which is completed by binding a book.

II
Growing pain

■ General Plan

Supervision / Organizer ; Plus1 / CAIKOR
Art Director ; Okreal Kim
Exhibition Period ; 2012 . 10. 8~ 2012. 10 .14
Exhibition Place ; CAI02, Continental gallery in Sapporo, Japan
Staff ; Jung Myoung, Plus1 artists in Sapporo Japan
Artists ; Miryeon Kim, Seunghyun Kim, Yoonkyoung Kim, Yunseob Kim, Sunhoan Hong, Jineun Seo,
Dohyeon Lee
Event ; Symposium , Oct. 7, 2012
 

Aug. 20th, 2012
Artistic Director Okreal Kim

2011--------------------------------------------------- 

The Art of Temptation

Exhibition and Symposium

Organization : CAIKOR

Art Director : Okreal Kim
Text : okreal Kim

ONE

  

In Contemporary Art Institute, Exhibition and Symposium will be held as follows: The symposium makes progress on 'the exhibition and discourse' simultaneously, which Creator, Critic and Collector present with a critical perspective. 'The exhibition and discourse' which Institute of Contemporary Art organize for the formation of discourse, makes an attempt to provide an open discourse each of them discuss to the flow of contemporary art, in that creation, theory and appreciation is one theme. While the established academic symposium focuses on the discourse for the theory, in Institute of Contemporary Art, 'The exhibition and discourse' is a creative of symposium in order for contemporary art issues, creating a critical discourse with creators, theorists and collectors.

The Art of Temptation is a subject of Institute of Contemporary Art exhibition and symposium. And 'The exhibition and discourse' lies in trying to share the point of communication which creators, theorists and collectors have for the temptation 'to do' and 'to be done' as to this subject.

For instance, the structure is divided into Part 3 in accordance with beginning, middle, and conclusion; primary temptation of the creator (the primary selection and communication goals in the format and content of work), temptations to the theoretical discourse of a critic and a curator (the social utility value of art) and the difference between viewers (collector) and temptation (value of work). These structures adds to the depth and space of the field leading the interval 3C, and makes narrow the gap occurring the fetters of the communication by creation, theory and appreciation.

3C is already driving the three major axis of art. Contemporary art does not look at or listen to the unilateral voice, only known as the temptation of creation. The communication of art lives in symbiosis with the co-host relating creation, theory and appreciation. The theme of this symposium will lead to the formation of the in-depth discourse among creation, theory and appreciation for giving anything sense to the technology of temptation in 3C. I sincerely wish to take interest and active participation in the event, for those who have curiosity about how temptation of art is composed of, and what the subject and the object of temptation go for.

"The art of temptation" accompanying the exhibition and symposium is divided into three parts. The first exhibition is "the creation of temptation," and the first symposium "to seduce me". This subject is associated with the author's perspective, which the subject of a creative looks at. What kind of temptation should the creator keep as collateral? What should be the communication arts? Should work seduce an appreciator and Collector? May work to lure consumers be good work? What kind of meaning should temptation be in art, the artist and work? Opening the first exhibition as the theme, the creation of temptation, seven artists freely discuss and present their own experiences and goals as relationships with artists, work and consumers.

TWO

"The art of temptation" Part2 - ‘Temptation of creation and appreciation’ is prepared to show new discourse with exhibition and symposium at Bongsan cultural center in Daegu, from 23th to 28th August. Creators, curators and collectors are going to hold a symposium for various types of visual discourse from the alluring point between creation and appreciation on 24th August. This exhibition and discussion designed by Contemporary Art Institute to compose discourse are discussions focused in field about the condition of temptation occurred among creation, theory and appreciation regarding the flow of contemporary art.

We are living in temptation of visual images from waking up in the morning to going to bed. The temptation has connotations of some purposes to achieve what it wants. Therefore, the essence of temptation is a necessary communication skill to take whatever it wants. The communication skill contains temptation to convey its purpose fascinating eyes and souls with various media. Then, what is the meaning of relationship between subjects and objects of temptation inhering in the fine arts, the representative art of visual images and how do that form? What are things that the fine arts have to tempt and why the fine arts needs that? What are necessary evils and goods that fine arts tempts?

This temptation of creation and appreciation is a provided forum to share a positive and creative discourse regarding temptation that should be sublimated into art. A skill for communication is essential in the age needing a skill of temptation urgently. A typical example is language which is a most concrete way of communication. Therefore, in fine arts, there are many works visualizing the language. The communication is a prerequisite for temptation. And the temptation is indispensable to convey what you want like persuasion and conciliation. However, sometimes, unilateral temptation which is not mutual communication becomes violence. Not to make temptation visual violence, it is necessary to be mature vision of caller's awareness of the age and recipient's cognitive faculty. Thus temptation which is not built on maturity could be 'apparently one, but differing widely in outlook', self-contentment.

We would like to find an answer of what meaning of temptation to fine arts is with sharing a mature discourse of various vision with creators, curators and artists by exhibition and discussion for maturity, the point of temptation occurred between creation and appreciation. We are mature modern people living in 21st century, so let's have time in this exhibition and symposium about what sort of charm the temptation is and an emotional skill, which is not like authority and physical force, and how the temptation can do creative and give off communication with tapping mutual potential energies.

THREE

 

-1.

In the Art Space Purl, as an exhibition and symposium, 'The power of gravity - Temptation of the interpretation' is presented with a new visual discourse for interpretation or criticism.

Part 1 had been the discourse with a center in the originator, and part 2 was the discourse as the exhibition or the place looking for the point of communication from the perspective of both creation and viewing points. Part 3, 'Temptation of the interpretation' is composed of interpreting the creation and appreciation as critical perspective. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art for discoursing 'Exhibition & Symposium' upon a three-part, Creation /Appreciation /Criticism are the field-oriented discussion in the process of trying what is a requirement and sufficient condition arguing each other against the technology of temptation. These attempts are neither the theory for the theory, nor art for art. It is the practice in the field to find the combination of the two. Not ending such a practical plan as a event, not being the passive object of the temptation through the discourse, but finding what the subject of temptation would be, what the art should tempt, and what the meaning of temptation in the art is.

If there is explicit to a clear external and internal means about the temptation of art, creation and viewing take place a clear vision about how and what it is.

-2.

Recently found in the pages of Modern Art, 'Temptation of the interpretation' for the third theme of 'The art of temptation', is critically approached by what an element of seduction is.

Although the temptation is essential in order to deliver what they want, for temptation not becoming violence, it is clearly required that what the boundaries of the format and content is and how to interpret assessment. For temptation not getting violence, although a serious creative map of the originator is important, it is also needed to change the way the consumers evaluate the value of creative. Creation and viewing are achieved by your personal or social interest for desire to improve a complimentary quality of life, but more importantly, there is the expansion of consciousness from trapped in the world to advancing to the world. For the expansion of consciousness, it is likely to deny the present value of the art, when the point of temptation is only exchanged by physical value. In 'Exhibition & Symposium', the third theme of 'The art of temptation' is seeking for the point of various communicate of creation and appreciation through critical perspectives. The writers, curators and artists from 'temptation of the interpretation', are able to find a single answer to what the meaning of 'temptation' is, sharing the discourse with the mature interpretation from a various perception.

-3.

Where art is far from freeing in the art market, 'The temptation of interpretation' is a good vision through a critical analysis to how different values can be exchanged, anticipating to what it is look to hold the creative meaning in the market. For this reason, a director of the Kunstdoc, Hong Soon Hwan's Installation Arts, 'The power of gravity' is how it is possible in art to affect the principle of gravity, sharing the various discourse. Creator, Curator, Collector is the three important axis relating communicate in art. I wish to hold discourse with artists, curators, theorists, and art-lovers about what it would be to be requirement and sufficient condition, for having 3C, 'what to tempt' and 'the point to be tempted'.

June 2th, 2011
Artistic Director Okreal Kim

2011---------------------------------------------------

ARTDAEGU2011 SPECIAL EXHIBITION

Period : 2010. 6. 2 - 6. 6
Venue : EXCO Daegu
Artist : Sam Francis
Artistic Director and Text : Okreal Kim

The space aesthetics of the white margin

Now in its fifth year, ARTDAEGU 2011 will be held from Thursday, June 2 to June 6. The art fair will be composed of a variety of exhibitions, events and a special exhibition. This art fair will meet the cultural needs of Daegu citizens. Art Fair plays an important role in being a representative cultural arts festival by promoting Daegu, a no-mix culture(combining culture and economic fusion) and advancing the creative arts. Above all, Art Fair is a venue for enthusiastic communication, not only with regard to cultural values, but the economic value for creators who produce images and viewers who consume them.

Exhibition View 2011

During ARTDAEGU2011, there will be a special booth showing the work of Sam Francis(Sam Francis, 1923-1994), a leading second-generation abstract expressionist. A master of space aesthetics combining reason and passion, Sam Francis invited and expanded his own painting as a modern artist, beyond the east and west, by exploring the inner world of the unconscious. His creativity found himself at the forefront of abstract expressionism and action painting, Tim’s note: what is it that is a variety of abstract and Color-Field Abstract through the exploration of his own art. Sam Francis’s ‘Space of White Margin’, sublimating his artistic thinking into Zen(禪) and the beauty of space, is aloof enlightenment that crosses East and West, conscious and unconscious.

While living in Paris in France, Mr. Francis said Yves Michaud taught him about the importance of blank white being not drawn. In his paintings, ‘white is conscious and blue is unconscious’. As in his work, Mr. Francis sows the margin is the horizon passing through unconsciousness and the blue represents the indefinite open space. Thus, open space for him is not empty, gut ‘the space aesthetics of the white margin’ serve the artist’s intuition and reasoning.

During Mr. Frances’ travels throughout Europe and Asia, he opened the painting which contained Eastern ideas and cultural experiences. In the spotlight of his paintings, he attended the Venice Biennale in 1964, and in the 1980s, he formed the original space aesthetic combining ‘the white martin’ and Zen(禪). Through this masterpiece and a series of untitled works, the space aesthetics of the white margin, beyond the trace of unvarnished act in the floating flow of color and type art emitted.

As an example, the rolling down, popping and spreading trace of oil paints are the waving evidence that express the pictorial trace. The artist’s intuition  and reasoning provide the place and time to stop the waving color, that is, the margin which starts exploring new space. Crossing between the conscious and unconscious, the margin of Mr. Francis’ awakening of the poetic inspiration is composed of the spontaneous; a screen with a natural style that consists of traces of oil paint and rich colors that take off the unconsciousness.

By revealing the artist’s intuition of consciousness and unconsciousness, maybe Sam Francis’s paint margin does not show certain concreteness. But perhaps he fills himself with an infinite desire for freedom and empties again? Surely Sam Francis’s painting found himself shining in 송 white margin while matching the canvas to the oil paints of the border, overlapping necessity and chance. This is done by crossing freely the screen which fills the emptiness. Mr. France used a very large canvas in the ‘American’ painting while seeking the margin aesthetics of communication. Margins, large of small, filled with imagination, are maximized through the relationship between abstinence and the aftertaste in color and rhythm by the aesthetics of his white space. The visual aftertaste maximized aims at the open architecture toward the infinite space in the absence of color and type.

During his first exhibition, Gallerie du Dragon(Paris 1952) his paintings has scaled the peak of the new movement. This sentiment was echoed by critics; Michel Tapié said that Sam Francis was the first to represent ‘an art of the other’(un art autre). Thus, this great artist had revealed a new art and his artistic soul, which was filled with white margins, had a deep resonance in his later masterpieces.

On display during this year’s Art Fair will be "SFF-1638" and "SFF-1636". They were painted by the torso with great flourish in a series that moved from consciousness(white) to the unconscious(blue). In his first exhibition in Daegu entitled ‘The space aesthetics of the white margin’, we can find ourselves living meaningfully within the margins of our lives.

June 2th, 2011

Artistic Director Okreal Kim

2010---------------------------------------------------

ARTDAEGU2010 SPECIAL EXHIBITION

Period : 2010. 6. 2 - 6. 6
Venue : EXCO Daegu
Artist : Kunyoung Lee
Artistic Director and Text : Okreal Kim

Kunyong Lee, Body Drawing, Performance 1972-1-2002

Kunyong Lee's The return of creation

In 2010, the fourth Daegu Art Fair will be held for 5days from Wednesday, June 2 to Sunday June 6."This year's art fair "The Journey of Creation" by the modern artist Kunyong Lee. In 2007, Kunyong Lee achieved the eighth position in the Daegu LeeInSeong Award competition. Kunyong Lee and theother artists who worked in the creative studio with him are now working with him again. This year's fair will be featuring an exhibit called "The Return of Creation."

'The Return of Creation' is projected by an attempt for the new awareness of the transition against how to deal with the fruit of creation in unstable, but openly structure. The artwork achieves the meaning by using the product of creation as an infinitely open window and as a place where ideas, feelings and the spirit of the age communicate with the appreciation of the artist and their personal fundamental expression of self. Thus, the significant creation of the art provides an extended experience which exposes the truth of human life and the closed world. As a result, artwork is likely to lead to distorted ideas about creation and art appreciation. because the price is determined and understood not relating evaluations by the manipulated desire to buy. Such evaluation is driven and manipulated by the desire to buy, rather than by the true appreciation of the artwork.

Dealing with the art works is to own those having the inner motivation to assess the value and changing it into economic value. Therefore, the Art Fair, an art trade fair, structured in the creation and appreciation should be evaluated in the first place of the value of creation for advancing in the proper function of exchange to forge the lack to each other. It's possible to go through retrieving the spirit of the artist recovery because of making sure of the differentiation and long-term competitiveness of the art market.

The special exhibition's subject, 'The Return of Creation', is showing the work of the artists concerning about what it is not to shake the value in art,confronting the mater of cretion in the history rather than the fluxing value of the art market. The first special exhibition's subject is displaying the artist Kunyong Lee, living for 40 years as experimental artist, who formating Korea Contemporary Art with a little philosophical methodology through the pictorial insights of phenomenology of the body by the conceptual art and the performance. An Eu Gene, a young artist working in Daegu, creates “The Journey of Creation” using video work to imbue Kunyong Lee’s spirit as “The Hommage for the Creation.” The second special exhibition focuses on displaying “The Birth of Creation.” The composing artist worked in a Creation Studio, and currently works there also. The exhibition “The Birth of Creation” includes works by young artists Kim Yun Seob, Lee Kang Hoon, Ha Kwang Seok, Lee Jae Heon, Jun Won Kun. These artists, who are in their 30’s, have created works filled with pure creative passion.

Daegu’s Art Fair 2010 theme “The Return of Creation,” intends to correct the commercial lines dominating art trends today. It also aims to rectify the imbalance of art meaning and the value of art. Restoration of the spirit of creative art not only restores the competition of the futuristic art, but also enables one to understand the true meaning of the value of art. At the same time the value of the possession of art is recovered.

Kunyong Lee, Body scape, 2008

The Journey of the Body for Interaction

In the 1960s, all of the world, the art composition was all about the flow of various forms of contemporary art and was focused on the United States. However, in Korea most people were still placed desperate times of need or were in the middle of trying to rebuild from the war and its terrible aftermath. Despite Korea’s state of mental and physical exhaustion, Korean Contemporary Art has participated actively in the formative experiment since the late 60s. In the 1970s, expanding awareness of the existential condition, Korea Contemporary Art was made up of experimenting with conceptual art, art performance and the variety of artistic creation. At the same time, Kunyong Lee formulated a very important axis for Korean Contemporary Art which led to exploring the quest of experimental contemporary art.

In Daegu Art Fair 2010 - The Special Exhibition, Kunyong Lee’s work is invited to provide an experimental and creative act of art which is designed to extend the horizon of Korean conceptual art and performance. Kunyong Lee’s art consists of three works, “The Body Term,” "Body Drawing," and "Snail's Gallop." These works make an interaction with the world via the body by using the artist’s aesthetic attitude against social situationns. So, Kunyong Lee’s performance of the interaction with the body presupposes place and time.

By using body art, this performance tends to emphasize the process rather the results. Kunyong Lee’s “Body Drawing” and “Snail’s Gallop” are representative works that evidence the importance of performance in art. This shows in his creative spirit by drawing the trajectory of the acting body. It interprets a human being with a specific place and time in the world, or as an individual interacting with the world body as the subject of inquiry room for the expression of Kunyong Lee’s will. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

By the that method, like the performance, 'the logic of place' in 1975, he has acquired his own originality with actions for communicating with the body, 'there, here, there', that is, a set of places made of the subject of the body has an inevitable existence 'here'. Therefore, rather early Kunyong Lee has a realization on the way with a event through the relationship between the presence and body.

Kunyong Lee, Snail's Gallop79-2005

In 2008, Bongsan Daegu Cultural Center exhibition of Kunyong Lee show: <I, now, here> has been more than 40 years based on the logical and physical locations around the meaning of the new Performing Arts showed in the journey of creation. For example, Kunyong Lee's the 'physical drawings' or 'logic of place' is not the premise to physical and substantial but theory, a phenomenon occurring in most of the interaction and communication have shown the principal. Such Kunyong Lee's creation attitude acquired at the body - to communicate the meaning of space and a place in the world through the body raising between the repetition and the difference, that is the subtle poem - when forces have a interaction with the different space, 'the body drawing' or 'logic of place' are constantly changing.

Thus, 'the journey of creation', Kunyong Lee's art work is done with the body. In his work, it seems that as the body is the subject of the case, so the action is related with mediating the case. The act of connections is depending on with whom you are flexible. It is the event in that it's like not a play on the basis of a script for but 'contingency' according to a place.

This event, in other words, Kunyong Lee 'physical drawings' or 'snail's pace' in a certain place and meeting point of the audience that 'difference' and 'repeat' will be created through the changing point. I visited Kunyong Lee's working place with expectations that is how to show the meaning of the body in The 'Art Daegu 2010 Exhibition. He released artworks as creative journey during 40 years among in warehouse converted Spacious studio filled with artworks. It was said that the artist, Kunyong Lee's view of a painting was practicing the creative attitude as 'The most basic is the most fundamental thing'. He solve the problem that "Picture, that is, the 'drawing' is not to draw a certain object in front of the eyes according to our brain's direction but 'the body draws, the body recognizes'. So, moving the object back rather than drawing front, then good enough to allow my hands to draw a line for leaving my imago, is showing lines extended body. 

Kunyong Lee, Body Drawing, Acrylic on canvas, 162X130cm, 2010

Present age seems to be saturated images. So, in the 21^st century, drawing, that is, essentially what is called conversation, the more essential questions comes on this era. Thus, it was thought that 'the return of creation', the subject of this art fair will give a new opportunity to the artists and that maybe is processing from a small change to a big change.

What did I want to make as communicating with the public in preparation for the exhibition? It is asked again that though the creation depart from individual case, I intend to what to communicate the world through my work. It doesn't seem that there is a specific communication to share my work with more people. Through this exhibition, I would like that many people enjoy, use, and share the occurring value by owning. I work the art activity in order to share sympathy and solidarity with more people. And it is an important part of my creative activity. "

With coming out 'the Journey of creation' for 40 years, the story concerning Kunyong Lee's creative activities and art for having been shown by the body, it had an unseasonable snow in April. It was suddenly flushed a bright light. Seeing cherry blossoms on the side of the road, falling it upon the snow, looking like the beauty to give this wonderful landscape, Kunyong Lee's 'the return of creation' is considered it as the body that the Earth (地) and Sky (天) quest, the tree scattered in the land blooms flowers meeting snow falling in the sky.

June 2th, 2010

Artistic Director Okreal Kim