March 12, 2013 – June 23, 2013
This show at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul is a yearly event showcasing a small group of ‘best’ emerging artists in Korea. It was a nice occasion to get acquainted with some names that we may be hearing more often in the upcoming years. A few notes/observations on each of the artists, initial quotes are taken from the NMoCA website, in alphabetic order.
Baak Je 
“Baak Je uses his body and repetitive attempts to form a relationship with the world. He presents works that breaks down the meaning of money, time and Mondrian’s work, which have unconditional and absolute values in a society.”
Wallpaper’s of Mondrian’s work, collages of ‘washed’ 1000-won notes, the subjectivity of time. I wondered if the broad span of social themes and range of media on display did not lead to a certain shallowness in meaning of Baak’s work. I felt that the works were balancing on the edge to being a cliché, and sometimes falling over this edge.
Beak Jungki
“Beak Jungki experiments through a scientific approach to show the relationship of the visual image and the essence of its material. He uses a bronze statue as a radio transmitter, or creates a print using water from the river to visualize the relationship between the river and the city; he also electroplates everyday objects, converting them into symbolic objects. By doing it, he visualizes the process of change.”
Beak was my favorite artist of the show. His work were rooted in conceptual art, however directly relating to both human experience and current social issues. Making prints using the acid Han river water was meaningful on a conceptual level, entertaining in the scientific method employed and beautiful in it’s result.
Gu Minja
” Gu Minja, who re-thinks upon societal frames and fixed ideas, completes her works by making ordinary people become participants. Results are various. Rather than instigating sharp criticism based on critical viewpoints, the artist records the performance through quotidian and run-of-the-mill methods such as photography, video images, and publication.”
Gu is more on the social-sculpture side of things in a Beuysian tradition, however an underlying current of theatricality bubbles up from beneath. There is a thin line between being socially engaged and theatrical, and Gu is treading just somewhere on this line.
Ha Daejoon
“Ha Daejoon has been making art inspired by his strange encounter with a chicken through the window of his basement bedroom. It was an intense experience of perceptive reasoning: he was looking as he was being looked at. The artist expresses in pale Indian ink with fine brush the fear of the ego through two symbolic elements: the fearful chicken, and the human body as the being of fear and anxiety.”
Well, no one will ever know if the story about the chicken is true or made up, the bottom line is that Ha’s work has an existential undertone, coupled with a traditional technique. I am not able to analyze ink painting in too much detail, but personally I feel the striving for realism can lead to an obscuring or disappearance of the underlying artistic intention. Too easy to become too decorative.
Kim Minae
” Kim Minae creates unnecessary structures for a space that is overlooked in order to arouse viewer’s attention to the space and remind its meaning. Her work is about experiencing the system of the world, and making compromises. It is a self-perception of the relationship with the world.”
I could understand where Kim was coming from – the sculptures were referencing the ‘sculpted’ urban environment in which our steps are directed at all times – but I was not sure if simply reproducing these elements in a gallery setting will reveal their secret powers. I missed a layer of meaning that would provide clues to the work’s critical reading.
Kim Taedong
” Kim Taedong portrays city-life encounters by photographing the people he meets in the city streets late at night. To approach a stranger is akin to exploring the city. The people that one meets at night in a complicated and anonymous city uncover the individualized and alienated side of a city.”
Kim’s work falls into the category of human individual centered photographers. In his/her case the keywords are ‘night’ and ‘city’. The photos are most of the time enjoyable in the sense how they present a very familiar yet strangely timeless moment.
Park Jaeyong
“Park Jaeyoung is the producer of DownLeit (the abbreviation of ‘a downright lie’), and presents to us an installation work that showcases the Mindcontroller. It is an interactive project which constructs a story of how much scientific authority has been suppressing the human psychology.”
I saw a link between Park’s and Baak’s work in the way they reacted to universal social themes. Park displayed only one larger piece on mind control and this made the presentation look more focused that in Baak’s case. However, as with Baak, the danger of falling into a cliché was there too. But in this case, this fall could be prevented by playing on an ironical note, by reading the whole artwork as a kind of entertaining, yet still meaningful joke.
Sim Raejung
“Sim Raejung uses personal experience or newspaper reports to materialize her imaginary stories in the form of drawings and animations. The characters in the artist’s works are usually involved in the act of eating, drinking, secreting and excreting to form relationships with other characters around them. The artist relieves her own stress by abusing or transforming the images.”
Sim’s work took the form of simple animations and drawings. I enjoyed the feeling of directness and honesty it created: The emotions and doubts common to every human being. Simple yet meaningful.
You Hyeonkyeong
“You Hyeonkyeong finds motive through contractual relationship. She intimately meets with models for over a year and continuously paints until what the artist felt was expressed. Such an artistic process can be seen as another kind of projection of the artist’s inner self in her expression, judgment and the perception of other people via experience.”
While the conceptual intention described in the paragraph above sounds valid, I was not able to directly link it with the paintings. The persons in You’s portraits are faceless and anonymous, they look like strangers even after a year-long interaction. Even the reference to the ‘artists inner self’ in the previous paragraph points towards the curators difficulty in grasping the underlying thought processes and intentions of the artist – we are left with an empty shell.