Plateau (Samsung), Seoul, March 7 – May 23, 2013
The main thing that stuck in my mind from seeing this show were the seemingly simple ‘arte-povera’-like sculptures (assemblages of cardboard boxes, trash bags, mattresses, wooden sticks) , which, after a close examination, revealed themselves as meticulously crafted ‘copies’ executed in bronze, resin etc.
In the entrance space, in dialogue with Auguste Rodin’s ‘Gate to Hell’, there was a minimal stick sculpture: What looked like a couple of nailed together wooden planks was in fact a bronze cast, i.e. same material as Rodin’s work. I liked this contrast yet similarity, supporting the Marxist claim of a circular (on a spiral) development of society (and art is one part of society).
The similar effect I have just described has been repeated throughout the exhibition. The sculptures had another pun to them in that the ‘simulation’ of cheap materials usually referred to previous well known works, e.g. Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” sculpture (in Gimhongsok’s variation it turned into a resin sculpture mimicking a cardboard box arrangement), or Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings (here re-enacted by Gimhongsok as a housewife’s variation of Pollock in the form of a ‘mopped painting”, ‘brushed’ painting, ‘wiped’ painting etc.)
Another artwork was a set of proposals for un-realized or (un-realizable) public sculptures such as “Solitude Tower”, “Liberation Square” or “Path of Glory”, which seemed to be making fun of public art commissions. I liked this work as it stayed conceptual without needing to carry the burden of materiality.
So far so good, I quite enjoyed this playful irony of references and symbols. The accompanying text to the exhibition took a serious (literary) face and set out to emphasize the ‘critical’ dimension of his works where he is trying to “question the production and distribution system of contemporary art today.” (There was actually another piece of art in the show where he hired curators to write/talk about his work). I found it strange that Gimhongsok referred to ‘questioning’ as all these precisely manufactured sculptural products that he presented in the exhibition were much closer to modernist or even pre-modernist paint/sculpt-on-demand artistic production models that to 20th century critical theory. Gimhongsok’s sculptures were affirmative of the contemporary gallery and art market system in every way they ever could be. They were well made products: Garnishing them with ‘criticality’ through writing made them look as ‘revolutionary’ as the new ‘revolutionary’ washing machine or fridge praised in a TV ad.
In a way it was very fitting that this show took place in a corporate gallery and one can only wonder if the whole show was not an double joke where Gimhongsok simply went all the way to produce a ‘perfect product’. If this was the case, then, however the show becomes a balancing act between being critical or following a simple paint-by-numbers contemporary art production process where artistic products are packaged with criticism in order to improve their market appeal.
I noticed that Gimhongsok is a professor in the school of theater design of one Korean university. ‘Theatricality’ was a big word in this exhibition. The sculptures talked by themselves already; they could be enjoyed as pieces of art/design; they were theatrical enough. Wrapping another layer of explanations and (curator’s) performances around them, however, revealed some contradictions. It’s like if Gimhongsok kept blowing air inside of his ‘art balloon’ until the balloon burst. The bursting of the (metaphorical) balloon did result in (metaphorical) rubber pieces lying around on the floor, however the question how a ‘reconsideration of value and meaning’ can be enacted through this process remains open.