exh.1997-1999

Independent Curator Period

1999----------------

                       The Method of 10 persons 
                               - The noon of intelligence, Transcendence vs. Submergence-

  ::Opening Event
     Noon - 4:00pm Performance: Modern dance (2 dancers including Eun-shil Lee)
     Noon - 4:30pm < The noon of intelligence, Transcendence vs. Submergence >
                             Discussions and critics on the artwork in display
     Artists :            Yong-kwan Kwon, Young-min Kim, Jin-wook Kim, Changsoo Park,
                             Moo-ho Shin, Gil-shik Lee, Dong-hoon Yim, Jin-taek Jung,
                             Byoung-Moon Choi, Joo-young Choi
     Directed by:    Ok-real Kim (Art Critic)
     Date/Place:     July 6th, 1999 at 4pm / Daegu Arts Center, Hall 4

Byoung-Moon Choi

Jin-taek Jung

Joo-young Choi

Young-min Kim

Yong-kwan Kwon

Gil-shik Lee

Jin-wook Kim

Art has been provoking numerous modes and styles under the name of ‘originality.’ Such diversity usually acts as a creative power, but at times it burdens us and causes great conflicts and confusion between conventions and originality. Should we keep silence with the many who could never understand contemporary art and the few who would not even want to understand it? ‘The method of 10 persons’ assimilates the two ideas of unfamiliarity (isolation) and familiarization (imitation), without putting them in opposition. Our intention is to form one principle out of several opposing ideas existing in daily perceptual experiences, and to regard it as an active affirmation, rather than a negation. The participating artists project a sense of reality on various objects.

Object is an important medium for the expression of our interests, and a tool of communication. It is a window of the communication between individual subjects, and between human and nature. It turns away from conventions and attempts to make a conversation for which a basis of understanding is prerequisite. And it is by reaction that we discern whether or not this conversation has been based on understanding. However, the most important element in this process is to respond. This exhibition will remind us that we can only break the silence and enable the communication between experiences (collective and individual) when we respond to the artists’ invitation.

Dong-hoon Yim

 

 

Moo-ho Shin

Changsoo Park

June 6th, 1999
Okreal Kim(Independent Curator)

1999----------------

Modern Myths

-In the body and language- 

Presented by: Internet Gallery of Contemporary Art (today, Post Gallery)
Display Period: May 11th – 16th, 1999
Opening Date: Tuesday, May 11th, 1999
Place: Daegu Arts Center (Halls 6, 7)
Directed by: Kim Ok-real (Artistic director/Art critic)
Artists: Kwon Ki-chul, Kwon O-bong, Jang Jae-hee, Jung Young-heouk
Jung Eun-you, Jung Tae-kyung

Do we see what a painting tries to say? Or, does it speak even? If so, how much do we listen to what it shows? Today I am again standing in front of a painting which I listen to with eyes and see with ears, trying to commune with it. Trying so that my eyes might become ears and my ears become eyes for those who have never made such an attempt nor even dreamed of it. 

In fact, it is difficult to understand a painting. Perhaps it is the reality of contemporary art that it easily leads us to misinterpretations and misunderstanding. Many say that they have nothing to say about it. Most of these people had no chance to understand art, or more precisely, even to look at its work. Art has been passing between objectivity (naturalism) and subjectivity (modernism). Being a fragmented subject in itself, it has provoked huge discourses, the message of which is focused on general notions of human status such as enlightenment, freedom, liberation, etc.

In short, although it is certain that contemporary art insists to have its own world that is shut off from the exterior and thus has become the art of escape and the art for art, we must keep in mind that there is an indispensable voice demanding justification of its existence. For this reason, ‘Modern myths’ is an attempt to justify various forms of contemporary art. In other words, the objective of this exhibition is to open up the possibility of communication to attain a justification of the contemporary art.

The participating artists (O-bong Kwon, Tae-kyoung Jung, Gi-chul Kwon, Jae-hee Jang, Young-hyeok Jung, Eun-you Jung) have worked with different values and interests (European painting, photograph, Korean painting) over 10 to 20 years. Accordingly, their ways of interpreting one subject vary. But what this exhibition needs us to do is to look for the basic image that is commonly shared by these artists in the context of modern and contemporary art.
 

May 11th, 1999
Okreal Kim(Independent Curator)

1999----------------

 Metaphor of Dismantlement and Nonresistance

Sponsored by: Internet Gallery of Contemporary Art (www.postgallery.co.kr)
Display Period: March 1st – May 15th, 1999
Artists: Lee, Seel-ku, Park Chul-ho
Directed by: Kim, Ok-real

Lee Seel-ku – Shattered Life, Overlapping self-scrutiny
Park Chul-ho – Gesture of resistance and metaphor of nonresistance


::Lee Seel-ku ; Fragmented Life, the Twofold Gaze at the Self

 








The works of Lee Seel-ku realize the reality of life through disorganization of trees or plants, parts of nature. His pictures suggest the significance of life by means of the metaphor of fragmentation and disorganization. At the first sight, the plastic qualities of his works seems to be commonplace symbolic signs, attained by disorganizing common images and escaping from self. However, it is noteworthy that the fragments of plants, represented in abstract image, suggest the way of gaze at twofold self.

"Untitled-1" and "Untitled-2" using the image of a pond or a swampy land, grasp the dual significance of the self: the one, the 'intrinsic power' of self, the recognition of the self as the subject of life, the other, the 'insecurity of living being', the recognition of undifferentiated space. "Untitled-3" makes the constant repetition of life and death into fragments of nature, a fossils. It is paradox that through this fossilization, our limited life on earth secures the eternity.

"Untitled-4" embodies the efforts to seize the reality of life in the languages of gesture. The artist attempts to seize the life in the embodiment of traces and actions. As a part of this attempt, in "Untitled-5" and "Untitled-6" the variant images of plants are floating in the air up and down . By conquering the limitation of space, the life in the water and the life in the air become one, realize the unity of life.

In "Untitled-7", the artist raises the gaze at the life to the selfless consciousness of life. The space of coexistence becomes the selfless and objectless space when the gaze at the self becomes one with the inner voice. In "Untitled-8"; and "Untitled-9", through the realization of inner unity, the space of harmony and formation suggests the possibility to find a new meaning of reality and existence.

The works of Lee Seel-gu intend to seize the duality of life through the disorganization of shapes. At the same time, his plastic languages, the disorganization of plant shapes symbolized in abstract form, inner expression of the space composition act as the metaphor of disorganization in order to illuminate the problem of life.

::Park Chul-ho ; The Gestures of Resistance and the metaphor of Non-resistance



The works of Park Chel-ho are powerful. His works have the power of silent resistance. He says "I don't take art as an unfolding of historical phenomena but as a process of evolution. And the changes of nature is the most important source out of which the life of art evolves." From his remarks, we can fine a clue to understand his works. He efforts to find the fundamental essence of life in ever changing and ever becoming nature at many removes from the reasoning for market of capitalism and the reproduction of images. He frequents the Upo swamp to seize the reality of life through the experience of earth, to escape the abstract ideas. In this exhibition, his new series of works bring up the problems about the identity of life.

In "work-1", he seizes the serious crisis of Life. The composition of picture with charcoal suggests the serious crisis of life. The shape of bird has dual meanings; the one, the warning against the crisis of human life and the other, the resistance to the disruption of nature. "work-2" and "work-3" show that the crisis of bird's life is directly linked to the crisis of our lives. In "work-2", the scratching technique with knife, which expresses the suffering of bird, achieves the expression of subtle inner voice.


"work-4", expressed by the technique of dry point, gives the impression of coldness and dryness. The coldness and dryness figure the silent resistance, as more powerful resistance than any other resistance. In this work the silent warning against the crisis of environmental pollution is expressed in the metaphor of non- resistance. Moreover, the fixing shape of a falling bird figures the silent and still resistance, the resistance through non-resistance. Compared with the restrain of silent resistance in "work - 4", the flexible line and movement of "work-5" and "work-6" strengthen the variety and vitality of works.

"work-7" and "work-8" suggests the crisis of the ecosystem using the lithographic technique. The birds that try flying for food on the dirty river and black earth visually outcry their pains. The artist, Park Cheul-ho, by the means of the metaphor of non-resistance, communicates the message that we, human being, can not survive on the earth where the birds can not survive.

Finally, "work-9" and "work-10" in which the artist attempts the plastic variations, lay great emphasis on the dynamic plasticity and ideological figures. Especially, "work-9" in which the crossing of black plane and white plane figures the complex duality of despair and hope, extends the significance of self-discovery to the insight of the life crisis and the perception of life.

March 1st, 1999
Okreal Kim(Independent Curator)

1998----------------

Woman of the woman

-Finding the identity of life-

■ Display Period: Sep. 10th – 17th, 1998
■ Place: Art center ‘Sol’
■ Organized by: Independent Curator, Ok-real Kim
■ Critic: Ok-real Kim
■ Artists: Myung-mi Lee, Young-sik Lee, Kang-mi Yoon


::Finding the identity of life


Today, one is accustomed to human mechanization, caused by materialism originated from the diffusion of consumption culture, and by the flood of reproduction. That is to say, woman has been devaluated and projected in immoral pornography by the commercial images indiscreetly used, materialism, and the banalized notion of reproduction. It is about time to dedicate our time and passion to the restoration of femininity and to finding of the identity of life, and establish the new values of the human beings. In this context, this exhibition proposes to erase these negative images of woman, set up a new vision of femininity and be actively engaged in finding the meaning of her existence. 

Artists and their work

Myung-mi Lee - Encounter:  “Figurative images” and “Letters”

To practice her definition of art: ‘art must be fundamentally easy, and should avoid being too serious,’ she paints in an easy and amusing way. Her work starts from a ‘play.’  Though it is not so explicit, a certain clarity exists in her work of free imagination and liberation. That is because there is a certain system established between the letters (of sound) and the figurative images (of vision). To be more specific, assimilating the figurative images of flexible meaning with the letters, she attempts to minimize the polysemy of a visual image and transforms their inconsistent relationship to an intimate one between two different systems. The traditional thought: ‘a mistaken sense can misguide impressions’ is now reconfirmed. [Painting 1] Myung-mi Lee, lady & gentleman, Acryl on canvas (227.3×181.8㎝), 1998.

Young-sik Lee – Looking at images to find the truth

The anxiety and isolation of the moderns are due to the overlooked oppressions caused by materialism and mass reproduction. The artist Young-sik Lee transfers the false image of these modern phenomena to an object, ‘gomushin (Korean traditional shoes).’ It is an attempt to trace back the origin of life and suggest “looking at the image” in order to “find the truth”, using the opposing senses of ‘real’ and ‘unreal,’ and of being ‘full’ and ‘empty.’ The logic in it is; the true image can be vividly demonstrated only when the false image is emphasized - like a beam of light shines more brightly in the darkness of the night. Such paradoxical analogy will help each of us to find the internal truth in ourselves. [Painting 2] Young-sik Lee, False image-s, Acryl on ‘gomushin’, 1998.

Kang-mi Yoon – Rapport between myth and everyday life

Kang-mi Yoon realizes the objects of everyday life and the mythical figures on canvas with intense strokes of brush and builds an intimate rapport between them. This is done as what lies under the surface of the myth and daily life comes out and transcends time and space. This encounter is that of artist’s imagination and her formative power, which enchants us to travel in this strange world, artist’s realm of the real and the imaginative. [Painting 3] Kang-mi Yoon, Castle in the air, Dying of cotton yarn and silk screen on paper (400×300㎝), 1998. 

Sep.10th, 1998
Okreal Kim(Independent Curator)

1997----------------

Prospects of the language of drawing and the communication

Opening the possibility of communication: Invitation to art and its realm of amusement

Sponsored by: Art Center ‘Sol’

Planning and Directed by: Ok-real Kim

Artists paint, supposing that there is someone to look at their work. Creating art and its maintenance cannot be done by one single person, but require art appreciators. Art continues because they exist. Thus the artistic creation and its appreciation co-exist and are done simultaneously. If the latter means to have artistic experiences, the first means to express such experiences and realize them in a specific work. However, it is not that simple and easy to express and encapsulate these artistic experiences in an image. It certainly requires talents and efforts, which does not mean that art belongs to some special group of people, for artistic experiences include the psychological activities occurred in a play. Everyone (not only artists) has a memory of play in childhood. The most important element in understanding the creation and appreciation of art is play and its amusement. …… 

Men pursue infinity through art, which is connected with the amusement that a child feels in a play. They build a castle in the air for themselves. Anguish arises from dissatisfaction on life’s limit, and illusion comes from a pursuit of infinity. Finally, play and art, fruits of illusion, open up the possibility of loving the reality. In other words, art narrows the distance between self and the object, and allows us to cherish life. It is the fruit of our creative activities, which requires its appreciators. Now I invite all who are losing love in heart to come to the realm of all possibilities, to yearn for infinity and to communicate with it. 

July 25th, 1997
Okreal Kim(Independent Curator)