해석된 풍경 Narrative Landscape
2017.11.25 – 2017.12.17
SUNGKOK ART MUSEUM
PRESEIDENT/PUBLISHER KIM GUEMHEE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR HONG SOMI
GUEST CURATOR YUN BEOMMO
COORDINATOR MOON YE SEUL, CHOI BOKYUNG
CURATORIAL TEAM HONG SOMI, MOON YE SEUL, CHOI BOKYUNG, PARK SUMIN, CHOI DA HYE
INTERVIWERS KIM YU JEONG, GIM JONG GIL, KIM JI YON, MOON YE SEUL, SHIN SEMI, YOO HYE JONG, RHEE KYU HYON, LIM JONG UP, CHOI BOKYUNG, CHOI JI NA, HONG JI SUK
TRANSLATIONS SUNGMIN ABE CHUNG, SUSIE CHO, ROBERT LILES
참여작가(27인) : 강요배, 금민정, 김성룡, 김정헌, 김준권, 김지원, 박불똥, 박생광, 손상기, 손장섭, 송창, 신학철, 안성석, 안창홍, 오원배, 유근택, 이명복, 이세현, 이제훈, 이종구, 임옥상, 임흥순, 장종완, 조혜진, 홍선웅, 황용엽, 황재형
27 Artists : KANG Yo-bae, GEUM Minjeong, KIM Sung Ryong, KIM Jung-Heun, KIM Joonkwon, KIM Jiwon, PARK Bul Ddong, PARK Saengkwang,
SON Sangki, SON Jangsup, SONG Chang, SHIN Hak-Chul, AHN Sungseok, AHN Chang Hong, OH Wonbae, YOO Geun Taek, LEE Myong-bok, LEE Saehyun, LEE Jeihoon, LEE Jong-Gu, LIM Ok Sang, IM Heung-soon, JANG Jongwan, CHO Hyejin, HONG Seongwung, HWANG Yong Yop, HWANG Jai-Hyoung
Grass and Wind / Hong Somi (Executive Director, Korea Tomorrow)
Fully appreciating a landscape requires a greater physical distance than usual. A distance from which one sees the forest over the trees, the coursing river and great waterfall over the drops of water that form them, and the relationships between groups of people over one individual. Obtaining this minimum distance from which a complete landscape takes form requires that we stand back and look. Such a landscape, as an accumulation of stories reflecting a continued consciousness throughout time, further surpasses the locations of a particular period and thus requires a kind of “time” beyond the usual. Finally, as Bertolt Brecht (1898-1957) claims, we need psychological distance to obtain the “estrangement effect” that assumes a critical stance independent of any particular place, moment, or person.
As we were planning Korea Tomorrow's eighth exhibition, Narrative Landscapes, we kept those three keywords of place, time, and people in mind as X, Y, and Z axes of the exhibition. We also sought to imagine not only the landscapes in the spotlight at the center of those axes but also the vague landscapes on the dark peripheries, corners, and boundaries of this space. Naturally, those vague landscapes became of interest. This may be because the scent of the tears and sweat issuing from the struggles of the people inhabiting those vague, peripheral landscapes is all the closer to the truth.
This kind of landscape created at the intersection of space, time, and people is what we call "reality." The reality formed at the juncture of these three axes becomes the attitude with which we produce events, thought, tragedy, and drama. Throughout history, art has played the role of holding up a mirror to reality or shining a light into its dark, disregarded corners. Resisting and critiquing reality is art's raison d'être. Like the description of the relationship between wind and grass in the late poet Kim Su-young's final poem, “Grass”, art repeatedly rises and falls in response to the winds of its time. Through the flexible resistance it develops through this process, like the “dancing grass” art does not break, but sublimates into a sort of dance. The analogy of “grass” and “wind” described by Kim symbolizes the history of humanity as it discovers life within resistance.
Thus the exhibition Narrative Landscapes looks back on the "gestures (dance) of grass itself" that we had not seen due to the social and political relationship between the grass and wind, and seeks to discover the characteristic aesthetic within it. We sought to create an exhibition that reconsiders the the form in which art, with its inherently resistant spirit, has developed its own aesthetic, and which observes the course of realism as it expands into the future. However, we know well that the above-described X, Y, and Z axes are too complicated of an explanation for truth and reality, and that in that context Kim's analogy of grass and wind is not clearly implied. It is now time to pursue a meaningful aesthetics of resistance that offers a universal call surpassing time, borders, and political demands for participation in reality. We seek to put historical meaning behind us and place our hope in today's landscapes produced by people moving forward one step at a time for the future. That is the meaningful landscape that art can produce within a cold reality.