Sangsangmadang Gallery

Bibliothèque: A Library of Folding and Unfolding

Information
Exhibition Duration: 2010.7.13[Tue] - 2010.8.24[Tue]

Opening:  2010.7.13[Tue] 6:00pm

Open Hours: 1:00pm – 10:00pm (1st monday of the month closed)

Location:  KT&G SangSangMadang Gallery 1(2F)

Introduction

Bibliothèque: A Library of Folding and Unfolding

Yoon Youngkyu (Sangsangmadang Gallery, Curator)

Since the introduction of Conceptual Art in contemporary art, through rigorous collection and analysis of vast amounts of information, an artist, as much as one is an individual, has come to the position oneself as a representative of the phenomena of the times. Following such conditions, an exhibition space has evolved into a conceptual space. Here, art material does not merely imply the artist’s information, but it also works as an integrated messenger covering the era, social environment, history, and the everyday lives of people.

In this exhibition, through Bibliothèque : A Library of Folding and Unfolding, we propose an extensity created not just by the exhibition, but also the research on art, exploring the investigation on the creation and withering of materials harbored by the exhibition space and the preservation of such. The subtitle of the exhibition, A Library of Folding and Unfolding, implies that folding and unfolding of information are not of contrary nature, but one of mutual flexibility. As folding and unfolding are not contrary concepts, this calls for an infinity where folding is followed by another folding, like the way one a part of a line is not a dot.

Going beyond the question of “What is Bibliothèque?,” this is an experimental exhibition looking into the true function of an exhibition space as an instrument in today’s art world. We will explore the various roles and possibilities and the time of possibility offered by the space of the gallery through this experiment. The exhibition serves as a procedure for throwing out questions and finding answers on the nature of the exhibition space beyond just a mere space to display artists’ works, on what such space collects and preserves this information, and on how some information to be preserved.

Sound Effects Seoul 2010: Sound Specific


1. Gallery Sangsangmadang 2010.01.08 - 2010.02.10

2. Space Hamilton 2010.01.08 - 2010.01.31



Exhibition

1. Gallery Sangsangmadang: Geoff Robinson
2. Space Hamilton: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Yangachi(Feat. Hankil Ryu, Euy Hyun Kwon),
                           Seoungyoung Kim + Younseok Oh

Geoff Robinson

Sun Mu Solo Exhibition
KOREA NOW

10.24. 2009[Sat] - 12.09. 2009[Wed]

Opening reception 10.24. 2009[Sat] 6PM
Artist talk 11.07. 2009[Sat] 4PM


l Preface

l Kim No-am, Director of Gallery sangsangmadang

Sun Mu is an artist who fled from North Korea

Sun Mu is an artist standing in a unique position among artists of Korea who garnered attention in 2006. Among those who fled from North Korea (saetuhmin), he is the only professional painter. He is discussed in relation to a debated topic of the divided Korea in Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has been interviewed by various media and has been invited to many important exhibitions.

However, we still know little about this artist. Paying attention to his delicate work should be done in consideration of the big title he is wearing – an artist who fled from North Korea. It is difficult to dissociate socio-scientific and political economic perspectives, regardless of whether one has completed a course in North Korean Affairs or one related to the Ministry of Unification. His mixed feelings of hatred and attachment have been deeply seated in his mind since the Korean Civil War. There is really not a fit word to describe those emotions. However, these have nothing to do with his artistic will.  It is what defines our existential structure. And it is compulsory that we start our discussion of Sun Mu’s work there.

After spending three years in art college in North Korea, Sun Mu risked his life to cross China and the jungles of South-East Asia to settle in South Korea. He continued his major in art there and completing his unfulfilled life as an artist in North Korea. It was not long before Sun Mu’s life changed drastically after his arrival in South Korea. His work became popular in the art market and he had to get used to this sudden popularity. Hence his artistic career’s trajectory took a somewhat of a different path than that of other’s as his past contributed a lot to the way his work was introduced to South Korea’s art world.

There’s bound to be more or something else than first meets the eye. Sun Mu’s life and work hovers outside our ways of conception, as he spent most of his adolescence in North Korea. There are countless accounts of painful memories of the Cold War and the modern history between him and us. The smokes are fusing out, leave their endless tail. Only Sun Mu has been able to fully experience the North and the South.

Today’s artists seem to struggle without the experience of marginalization. Creativity spurs out from experience. The same applies for a good appreciation and understand of a work of art. Through inter-subjectivity and integration, ideal communication becomes possible. However, such a requirement renders a distance between Sun Mu and us. Such distance segregates us and leads us to feel a kind of deprivation. We are further away from each other. We both sense the presence of a stranger. Our effort to understand and imagine how things must have been for Sun Mu becomes useless. We cannot possibly see the actual reality of the North. We can only conjure up the conceptual idea or media-projected image of the North: the world’s last hereditary communist nation, trampled human rights, and people dying of hunger and oppression. For such conditions, there seems to be no appropriate means of discussing art history, theory, and critique. His work challenges our understanding and appreciation with its unfathomable identity.

One can recognize Sun Mu’s face in his paintings depicting Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il, the father and the son, and Kim Jong-il as the founder of a cult, and the faces of the people of the North expressing their satisfaction with their life. One realizes that his work and the viewer share a resemblance. Obsession over the purity of a racially homogenous nation is perhaps the only thing that connects us with Sun Mu. Have we ever thought of some other ways to relate?

The news and weather of North Korea

If art creates illusion, life and reality are the tools that can dispel the illusion. The balance and fantasy which has been building up in the last five decades of the two Koreas’ post-colonial history are dismantled in Sun Mu’s work. His most personal artistic experience does not remain as a mere personal memory. One cannot avoid the inevitable truth behind the false sense of peace since the truce between the two Koreas. It stands as a specific experience in the completion of a work of art, as experience is the source of art.

Our interest in Sun Mu is more than just a curiosity. Rather than looking at the works as a leisurely activity, we reflect on ourselves. This is neither Sun Mu’s intention nor the subject of his work. However, it stands as the only condition allowed to us and Sun Mu. At the same time, it is a condition of a work of art. Through Sun Mu, we can verify a transparent reality. What happens outside the boundary of art is more dramatic than that inside the realm of art. History does not happen according a rational set of procedures and events. There is a balanced mix of coincidences and destiny, working together to form an inevitable event. This applies particularly to our history.

South Korea has had to struggle against war, poverty, and military dictatorship while the North relished in their success throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Our youth had to be sent abroad to the jungles of Vietnam, the mines of Germany, and the vast desert of Saudi Arabia. We volunteered to be the fool and went to the sea to catch the whale. To seek what could not be sought in reality. We became little midgets, calling ourselves the descendents of darkness, and looked for Jesus in Seoul. Our portrait from the past overlaps with that of those who flee North Korea now. This bitter resemblance adds sore pain to the wound.

Though ups and downs, we have reached the 21^st century. In the late 90s, thanks to Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine policy, the art world had the opportunity to discuss North Korea and whether or not communication between generations with completely different social and economic experience was possible and how. However, in contrast to the firm DMZ of today, it still evades our understanding. 

Let’s think about the North Korean News which is sent out everyday. It repeats like a weathercast after the 9 o’clock news. However it differs from the weathercast as the projection remains the same everyday. It is the repetition of a clear sky and cloudy day. What this repetition reproduces, or what stays as the years go by repeating its self-reproduction, seems to give a working means to a kind of insecurity and depression. The weathercast advises us not to consider outings to the North or the South. What changes is the look and fashion of the weatherman. It doesn’t matter if the projections are right or wrong. A nuclear bomb exists then disappears and Kim Jung-il has died many times over and over. The North and the South only exist as the images they intend to project.

What we are facing

Somebody inquires. Is the Korean peninsula a nation? Most people who have received a formal education would say yes. The world map with latitudes and longitudes crossing over in grids presents Korea as a peninsula. However, things don’t look that way to Sun Mu. Someone said that Korea is an island nation. Come to think of it, it is so. One cannot get to Korea without a plane or a boat. A divided nation is a geological matter. What one learns in a school geology class is contradicted by a political economic error.

Sun Mu made it to South Korea by crossing the big Chinese continent and the jungles of Laos. Gaesung industrial products, livestock, and rice packages can freely cross the boundary between South and North Korea, but a person has to risk his life to do so. It is like an island. One can visit North Korea as a tourist, but cannot communicate as one freely wishes. Tragically, only the brief reunification of divided families and visiting one’s hometown come and go. And even these are limited opportunities. Seeing their pain through the media is an unfamiliar and unrealistic experience. Reality is reduced to people’s agonizing drama. Our tears don’t console them as they are nothing more than that from everyday life. It may seem disrespectful, but the reality of North and South Korea has become a somewhat convoluted drama. The abject reality is only an ingredient to stimulate a catharsis. We are forced to a by-standing audience’s seat, becoming consumers of a cinematic tragedy. Such irony is our logic and rationale. And this is the actual entity behind the insecurity that forms the hesitation over being called a homogenous ethnic group. Such truth or ideology and the void behind the vanished empty room are what we are composed of. We are nothing more than just story-tellers of an episode of a drama. We become existing strangers.

When South Korea and North Korea reunite, could we become happy? Would the happiness of the nation and citizens suffice personal happiness? Could it be just a blindness that has led us to become an isolated nation? There is no way to tell. Our predecessor’s prophecy that reunification is our wish and will save us seems a little unclear. The argument contending our nation’s big problems and conflict is due to society’s little contradictions and endless conflicts become far less convincing and impose a sense of discomfort. Would there be a happy ending to a homogenous nation’s purity’s drama?

They say two means trouble. It is because once you choose one from the two, one becomes fettered to it. This is so. The split into two Koreas since the liberation has led to two separate paths of pain, but the world goes on. Time makes us heal and laugh over the past. However, the reality of the divided Korea remains unchanged. It looks as if it is making endless demands. It is not a surprising thing. Nothing much has changed in Korea during the transition from 20^th to the 21^st century. This droning instability and sadness is transparent and specific. Such reality composes the appearance of the former North Korean artist we are trying to see. Understanding Sun Mu’s childhood in North Korea, the experience of fleeing the state, settling in South Korea, and formulating one’s artistic creation are the challenges one faces when trying to understand the artwork. History has taught the inevitable pain of the splitting of a nation.

Every nation has its own problems. It may seem simple, but it is always complicated. It is only that one doesn’t examine it closely as it is not really an issue that concerns one’s immediate life. It is easy to push it away from a subject of speculation. Hence a complicated and desperate issue translates into a simple, banal one and we exchange a casual greeting or smile with Sun Mu.

Sun Mu cannot be sure to expect an appropriate and rational exchange of opinion and interest with us. There is no good advice to address this problem. It is bound to fail as a cliché and be seen as overly re-hashed words. Such a problem is due to a fundamental deficiency and tension that cannot be solved in the immediate future. Such tension is based on the existential condition that leads us to repeat attraction and repulsion between us, him, and the artwork. This is Sun Mu and our problem to solve. We must place ourselves on equal footing – the extent of our misunderstanding is the same and rightful as that of his and hence it must be equally honored. And mutual efforts should go on. This exhibition only directs us to a certain point in the path. There is still a long road to go if we are to truly understand and accept each other.

Sep. 11 - Sep. 17, 2009


Song Chayoung, An Jungju, Lee Yeleen, Jeon Suhyun, Cho Chungyeon




Visiology is Sangsangmadang’s annual program of which the purpose is to provide more opportunities for the video artists who mainly focus on a single channel. This year’s Visiology 2009 presents a theme of Single Channel City that will deal with the issue of place and space. It will screen the videos that address the urban life, from the city-dweller’s perspective, that doesn’t allow anymore unknown place for people today.



Preface

VISIOLOGY 2009: Single Channel City

Walk on the screen.

The four seasons of Seoul come and go and pass by the people just finishing up a long day. The city, seemingly turning into a theme park or a gallery, provides an unlimited surplus of premeditated events and shows. Seoul is not exceptional in this sense. The clouds are passing by fast and A4-sized pieces of paper get blown off over the skyscrapers. An underground hermit is staring through a tiny window that seems like a television monitor at the season fleeting by like the wind. People breathe out heavily in the living room of their high rise apartments.  

There is an Italian movie titled La Strada(1954). It depicts the lives of Gelsomina and Zampano who carry out their grave reality and evoke a feeling of sorrow and an emotional touch along the wistful theme music. On the other side of the emotional spectrum, there is a personal catastrophe in facing the course of change from the traditional society to the industrial. When walking out of the theater after a heart wrenching movie, we welcome the salivating desire of capital that fabricates our universal feelings into nice products.

In the motif of video, the early 1980’s movie Videodrome(1983) impressively illustrates the main character’s suspicion and fear around new media. Here, reality and illusion cross each other through the medium of video and therefore whether the desire is solely mine or the other’s is completely ambiguous. The problem of people living in the video era is ably symbolized. Such a point of view is perhaps more elucidated in the Matrix. The mythical and spectacular Matrix is another version of Videodrome.

Our life comes across various kinds of moving pictures through various channels. Every day certain things define and influence our minds, perhaps consciously or unconsciously. Neither our aesthetic or emotional life is completely free. There is a resistance movement against the operation of such an outer force and we find it in artists.

This familiar occurrence happens around the media and in the inside and outside of art. The media is said to be open-ended. The same goes for interactivity. However, the reality is another story. It involves the subject defined as a gaze and implicates the matter of power. Making a leap in logic, the simplest form of media art, which is usually thought of to be single-channel video, opens itself up to the gaze of the viewer, but at the same time, the viewer is exposed to the single-channel and thus, their interactive mechanism is unequal and irreversible.

<Song Chayoung, Chamber, 3min 8sec, HD, 2008>


<Song Chayoung, The Isle of the Dead, 2min 55sec, NTSC, 2007>
 

We can get certain inspiration from the “totalitarian interactivity” introduced by the new-media critic Lev Manovich. “A Western artist sees the Internet as a perfect tool to break down all hierarchies and bring the art to the people. In contrast, as a post-communist subject, I cannot help but see the Internet as a communal apartment of the Stalin era: no privacy, everybody spies on everybody else, always present are lines for common areas such as the toilet or the kitchen.”

This unfamiliar concept of “totalitarian interactivity” has a nuance of disrupting the optimistic vision of “interactivity” surging around the media art. The odd combination of the two conflicting words of totalitarianism and interactivity has the effect of opening up a new point of perception. It advises us to review the context of political economy, culture, and art in which the “interactivity” that we receive involuntarily has been accepted and functioned. We can think that such misery or interest can be possibly experienced in a somewhat exaggerated or specific time and place.  

<An Jungju, Harmony at the Porte, Triumphal Gate, Harmony_Lip-sync ProjectⅡ in Paris,
HD, 3min 24sec, 2008>


<An Jungju, Harmony at the Puerta, Alcala Gate, Harmony_Lip-sync ProjectⅡ in Madrid,
HD, 3min 23sec, 2008>

Manovich’s essay talks about the internet and the information technology society, but we can apply his analysis further to media culture or the new-media culture as a whole. Not to mention the single-channel videos included in the exhibition, the term single-channel video art is somewhat vague. It may be impossible to fully grasp the term and what are the forces that rush into it or rush out of it, unless you live an in-between life like Manovich who re-settled successfully in the United States from the old Soviet Union. It may be a special experience had by only a limited number of people like Nam June Paik, whose life swept through that of a colonized citizen to the European avant-garde and to a cosmopolitan artist in the United States. Encountering life, impressions, or a certain poetic feel in this world of cutting-edge new media that has evolved through single-channel video, one of the oldest forms of media, is perhaps such an experience.

 

The emergence of new media makes the world even narrower and diminishes the safety zone between people, cultures, and places. Consequently, for the artist, his intuition and inspiration narrows more and becomes trite and cliché. All he can feel is an eternal reincarnation of routine and tedium. For this reason, plentiful theories and aesthetics about single-channel video in contemporary art are mostly myths or rather absurd or fallacious fables. Of course, in the history of other genres, forms, or isms is no exception to this. The ominous syndrome in Videodrome is also the syndrome of interactivity that Manovich discussed. We can observe similar symptoms in the recurring fever or neglect of the public toward art and artists and the artist toward art or the public. Leaping in logic from a perspective of aesthetic politics, this can be transformed into a type of fascism of media culture or aesthetic fascism.

 

So, what’s the matter with this? Isn’t our life somehow kitsch and like a soap opera that plays on cliché emotions over and over? Moreover, the consciousness, memories, and images created and shaped in everyday life, which is surrounded by the rise and fall of the media, can fall into two completely opposite perceptions or ideologies.

 

<Lee Yeleen, Knock to the World Under Our Foot, 3min, 6mm, 2002>

Single Channel City

 

One of the noticeable changes in art along with the advance of media is the change in perception and attitude in dealing with the issue of time and space. We can see it especially in the experimental performance and the single-channel video that have expanded since the 1960’s. The issue involves the so called specificity of space, conscious place, and the matter of the human body that exists in time and space. Among them, we can see that the matter of space has been brought up in the front of the matter of time. The reason comes from the fact that the lives on this globe have been organized due to urbanism and the expanding network between cities. It also comes from the view that the urban citizen who is situated in such conditions of life is the contemporary human being. Most of all, the central issue in the matter of place is how to deal with regionalism along with the globalization of contemporary art, which is an increasingly expanding contemporary culture.

 

Single Channel City, the exhibition title, is a designation in the consideration of the matter of place and space, which is being dealt with in media art. The exhibition involves projects from the perspective of city dwellers and the urban world, which doesn’t allow any more unknown space for contemporary citizens, as well as the lives held within it it.  

 

Living a life, not straying from the track of everyday routine that is getting divided into microscopic segments, is, ironically, a type of heroic life. It is true when you think about the fact that adapting oneself to the frame and track of strictly organized routine is a blessing for some people and the result of exertion for another. Through the means of single-channel video, the exhibition connects the process of internalization of urban life and the things that are composed and organized from byproducts of the process where only a single “gaze” and “the city” is a place for life. The form, without a condition of existence, is empty. The familiar issue of ideal communication is thoroughly one-sided.  The phenomenon that has occurred since the conscious and events and things have become evidently fragmented. Single Channel City, an exhibition that consists of single-channel videos, is a metaphor of such a view point and aesthetic endeavor. Single-channel video presents the specificity of place in communication art.

<Jeon Suhyun, June, 2009, 10min, HD, 2009>


<Jeon Suhyun, 軍隊+Bundesliga, 7min, HD, 2008>

VISIOLOGY2009
 

When we reflect the confusion, abstruseness, and complicated aspects in contemporary art, especially around the matter of technology and art, the terms and concepts often can be confused with each other and it is not easy to distinguish the single-channel video from contemporary art in a large sense from media art on a smaller scale. Nevertheless, we cannot depend on the dogmatism of summarizing it into several concepts or perspectives based on not-yet-agreed or specific experiences. What we have confirmed many times is that through single-channel video, which is the simplest exhibition form in media art, we are still expecting to touch the issue in a simpler and clearer approach and that single-channel video is a medium through which the artist can express his subject and viewpoint in a simpler and clearer way.

 

The curatorial team of Gallery Sangsangmadang believes that we can attain a certain degree of accomplishment in grasping at this aspect of contemporary art by introducing single-channel video artists and their work consistently in an annual program over a long time period, not just in a one-time program. In the development of contemporary art, the matters of visual image and its meaning, the matters of form and content, and the matters of comprehension and communication are all intertwined and entangled like a cobweb.   

 

The video exhibition has its doors open to an infinite point. We invited artists considering the context of video art that has been recognized as the most reflective and contemplative expression of art. The participating artists have searched for their artistic philosophy and reality of life through art, using the form of single-channel video.

 

Starting from the above idea Visiology 2009 aims to provide more opportunities for video artists, who mainly focus on single-channel video, and to present their work and enhance their capabilities through technical workshops. We would also like to think over the technical and artistic strategies and applications of single-channel video which has been approached only in a conventional or general context so far. Moreover, examining various acceptances and aspects of media art and dealing with the issue of public acceptance of art and further expansion to the public, we would like to present young artists who explore the possibilities of single-channel video.

 

We would like to offer an opportunity to examine the current status of single-channel video art through the exhibited work and furthermore to think about the relationship between technology and art and between the artist and society, which has been a long-lasting concern in the history of art. We will also reflect what the video images are or can be in life and in the passage of life. The images that run on the monitor or slowly through our mind can be a place for memories and introspection.

 

However, most of all, the common point of video is to place artistic intuition and sensibility on the flow of time and consciousness. For the video artist, single-channel video is like a sharp sword that he can thrust into the routine of the city and with which he knows where the secure aesthetic shelter is against the tsunami of cutting-edge media.

<Cho Chungyeon, Utterance, 3min 22sec, HD, 2009>

Screening

9.11 Fri     6 PM
9.12 Sat    5 PM
9.13 Sun   7 PM
9.14 Mon   5 PM
9.15 Tue    5 PM
9.16 Wed   5 PM
9.17 Thu    5 PM

Time  40min
Venue  Cinema Sangsangmadang(KT&G Sangsangmadang B4F)
Admission Fee   4,000won


Event

9.11 Fri   6PM  Opeing Screening + Artist Talk  l  B4F Cinema
9.15 Tue  6PM  Technical Workshop  l 2F Gallery
                               * Workshop participation application: gallery@sangsangmadang.com

LABORATORY02: Picnic on the City

June Kim

Mark Jenkins

Donghee Park

Yangachi

Jin Yang

Jeewon Yoon

Sanghyun Yi

Yileighkheri

Ji Lee

Jongwan Jang

Jinyeoul Jung

Donghoon Cha

Eune Grace Jung

Laboratory is not just an exhibition but a collection of multilayered events that include workshops, performances, and seminars. The first Laboratory was held last year under the theme of “social intervention” and showcased artworks that use media to intervene in social issues. Titled “Picnic on the City,” this year’s Laboratory will consist of projects that meditate upon life in the city from different angles and sensibilities. It will introduce ten artists from Korea and abroad, including painters, designers, and architects. They will present street performances, participatory workshops, artists’ talks, and theoretical seminars, where the participants will be able to engage with the themes in question in depth.

 

Preface

 

I step out of a building during lunchtime and allow myself to hold my breath and only think about myself while I walk slowly. There are sometimes when I suddenly let out a gasp in my daily life. Everything flowing around me seems like acting and even my relationships with people become unmanageable. Further, I come to have doubts about whether all the proceedings I’ve taken so far are led by my own intention and desire or not. My actions could have been dictated by another larger system like society and the media or maybe even another person. To a certain extent, anyone can observe himself by merely looking at his own life like a spectator viewing a virtual experience.

But such a frightened awareness usually goes away immediately and we become led back to our ordinary days once again. In fact, this is often the same route for anyone who belonging to a capitalist society. We eventually get immersed in our exchangeable system of values and consistently grasp these values as sublime objects without awareness of their real worth, since everything of great worth in our life is converted into capital. The experiences making up of the fragments of our daily lives like education, career, love, etc. have been merely valued on social terms and have relied on the values of society rather than their real substance. This situation of applying our own values for the sake of the measurement of others should be a serious concern, as it is equal to a neglect of our own life as it becomes a mere practical application of something exchangeable and virtual. 

Although we often believe that we’ve hardly had to work for something that makes us happy, we’ve actually been controlled by a social system and been played like a puppet, as one who merely adapts to the system. Such, the challenge of endeavoring for new value in life is not that easy. It follows the hard struggle against something that makes us look better, an object we’ve always chased after, a daydream that drives us in the virtual happiness, and also a sense of uneasiness without such the physical feelings. 

more..

A Walk in the City

LABORATORY 02: Picnic on the City attempts to reveal the diverse forms of the challenges of approaching ordinary life in the city in artistic terms. A discourse on whether art can change society has been continued so far. This exhibition intends to discover the concept of art in practice in terms of holding the posture of life through voluntary participation and a course of resistance, rather than a real change or turnover in society. A walk can be an example of such an attitude toward life. A walk provides one with consensus and the experience of life untreated. This is equal to wandering about without any purpose and could be a small lavishness among people who understand the worth of art in ordinary days.

The Hongdae province is a place that gives me such a chance. I have only glanced at spaces besides dwelling and working places in the area of Gwanghwamun. But after working in gallery near Hongdae for about 2 years, I’ve come to enjoy wandering from place to place in the neighborhood while appreciating all the trivial sceneries.  Although people come to this place for work every day, it seems to have already become a proper shelter for many people. They glance at the people coming and going while sitting on the street or forming relationships with one another while freely strolling about.

The attractive cafes and cultural spaces provide certain liveliness and a change to the totally commercial spaces at night in order to dazzle the eyes of people passing by. The spaces have such a dramatic flow and provide for a new day. The spaces have been created not by any formal plan, but by their spontaneous energy. Although the center is marked by a crowding of modern and commercial spaces, the more attractive spaces, which are appropriate for Hongdae, still exist and extend around the circumference. They form an organic whole and create the characteristic views of the neighborhood.

Art Practice and the appropriation of Space

All areas in a city cannot be culturally attractive and provide their own characteristic features like Hongdae, Anguk-dong, and Buam-dong. And only a small portion of people keep on living in these limited spaces, but such spots located in the city belong to some people as part of their lives and livelihood. One can think of this idea of appropriation(專有) of a space with artistic imagination when people experience a sense of alienation within the space of an indifferent city square. Any space is not divided from life. Spaces are always historic, political, social, and individual. One can recognize himself as one carrying on the idea of the space and develop a sense of resistance to ordinary encroachment, applying critical art practice in forming the space and its significance.

LABORATORY aims for an intellectual turnover based on specific experiences through participation in interactive and course-centered projects. This exhibition includes Street Art, where artists’ creative performances provide an interesting crack in usually adhered to role of city space, the interactive Workshop, where audiences and artists consider the issues relating to the city together and apply them to creative performances, Seminar, where participants discuss the matters of the city sphere and art practice within in this space, and the external Event portion, which is also open to all citizens.

Such events like Street Art and the formal experiment Workshop are challenging opportunities for the participant artists as well. They require a different style of approach from the typical exhibition and attempt to create a totally different environment within the exhibition space. This is a chance to narrow the distance between the street and the exhibition, the audience and the passerby, the artist and non-artist, and art and ordinary things. The exhibition is open to all kinds of possibilities and creative practices and encourages visitors to experience the different forms of the workshop and art performances and eventually make changes in their ordinary lives within the site for the sake of their own livelihoods._Park Sohyeon

 

Artists and Their Work's Images


Embed #1  Mark Jenkins

American artist Mark Jenkins makes street installations with ordinary tape and plastic wrap. His works use everyday formless materials to create new forms right in the streets. By installing headless dummies or creating unexpected situations in the middle of lifeless public places such as near street lamps or garbage cans, or against walls, he brings vitality to ordinary streets. The artist himself calls his works “taping sculptures.” Through the process, Jenkins seeks to transform each public place into something controversial, where various groups of people including the government, advertisers, artists, and citizens can produce discourses. By disguising his sculptures as new performances everywhere in a city, Jenkins performs urban intervention.


The Bubble Project  Ji Lee

For this project, over 60,000 stickers in the shape of speech bubbles are printed. They are then stuck on billboards, bus stops, phone booths, and subway advertisements. In addition, they are left blank, therefore inviting passersby to fill them in. Later, the results are photographed. The Bubble Project thus transforms the monologues of the anonymous masses into entertaining public dialogues. Everyone is invited to express himself or herself freely, without any censorship. Moreover, everybody wins with the Bubble Project. While ordinary citizens have fun interacting with and looking at the transformed speech bubbles, advertisers are happy because hundreds of photographs of their advertisements, with the speech bubbles stuck on them, are posted at TheBubbleProject.com. Here, people can also download the free bubble template, which they can print out and use to bubble their own towns, and upload their bubbled photographs. In fact, thousands of Bubblers all around the world have started the Bubble Project in their respective cities.


Pools on the Street  Jinyeoul Jung

Jinyeoul Jung studied philosophy and design in Korea and received an MFA in design from Yale University. However, instead of being limited to graphic design, his work interprets ordinary objects as various signs, taking into account public places, streets, and every corner of the city. Jung’s Pools on the Street is an installation that sets up mirrors of various sizes on the street. By reflecting back the windows, bridges, and actions that city dwellers usually pass by without thinking, it encourages people to look at themselves as well as other ordinary objects from a new perspective. By thus exposing and recalling the trivial images buried in urban life, Jung’s work provides an opportunity for individuals living in the city to face themselves and to expand their self-perceptions.


Transparent Theatre  Jin Yang

The Transparent Theatre intends to bring distanced realities into the corporeal and sensory dimension, thus destabilizing them in ways that can be obtainable and revelatory. A visual recording of a chosen building’s interior will be projected onto its façade on a one-to-one scale. An overlay of the actual perspective and an image of the perspective projected on the exterior surface brings visual transparency to the enclosed space, along with ambiguity between realities and media representations. The work presented at the Laboratory02: Picnic on the City explores redeveloped areas in Seoul, exposing the unremitting erasure of the collective memories of the city.

Catacomb Series  Donghoon Cha

Donghoon Cha has created a series of paintings that contain a kind of sympathy for objects that have lost their original functions or have been abandoned. For this exhibition, he will display paintings outside, at Seogang and Wonhyo Bridges. In the gallery, he will exhibit drawings including A Happy Family and, on the bridges, he will create a series of black and white graffiti pieces or murals that are reminiscent of the catacombs in Rome. Cha has chosen to place the outdoor works next to the sewage drainage into the Han River because it is a hidden aspect of Korean society and recalls a chapel for people who have been abandoned by society. By thus painting disposed lives on the bridges of the Han River, the artist will masterfully create a symbolic memorial for a society that runs meticulously like clockwork.


The Land of Plenty  Jongwan Jang

Jongwan Jang’s Eden Painting series will be displayed in an obscure corner on a small street near Hongik University. Ironically, however, it will be possible to see his tiny paintings, thus installed inside a cable car, very clearly only through a telescope set up in the gallery. In the Last Supper and Scenery with a Tiger, fantastic images overlap with images of cheery people in the streets. By allowing viewers to look at images that are desirable yet non-existent, and manipulated and jumbled solely through a telescope, Jang creates an absurd situation much like stealing a wistful glance at the illusive Garden of Eden from afar.

Seoul Zombie  Yangachi

For this exhibition, Yangachi will display artworks that actively enter and intervene in society. Through them, he focuses on the “order” that is imposed on urban spaces. According to him, cities are the sites of appropriate relationships mediated by order, and this order most clearly shows the purposes of such urban spaces. His works therefore begin with the proposition that the images not only of artificially created spaces but also of naturally created spaces within cities are the results of thoroughly calculated order. Avoiding hours when the order of cities is most active, he seeks to introduce changes into urban spaces without interfering with the functions of the city. For instance, he visits the Myungdong and Hongdae areas in early morning, during which the order of the city is relatively lax, and collects garbage and ordinary objects, turning them into new sculptural works. Focusing on the by-products or residues of the order of urban spaces, he demonstrates the possibility for these discarded objects to become the agents of new urban intervention.


Shopping  Jeewon Yoon, Sanghyun Yi

These two artists, one of whom just graduated from a K__ University and the other of whom is still enrolled in yet another K___ University, thought hard about how to spend the production budget of 300,000 won. Instead of spending it themselves, however, Jeewon Yoon and Sanghyun Yi decided to give 100,000 won each to three elementary school students and to observe how the latter would spend the money. The artists set a precondition that the three primary school students had to spend the entire 100,000 won in one day and proceeded to record the pupils through photography and video. Yoon and Yi nearly blindly carried out the project, refusing to change the idea or the process in the middle for a better result. It was more about the process rather than the outcome. The project focuses on how an idea can create a form by itself through a process rather than through the artist’s control over the work.


Guidelines for Citizens’ Emergency Stress Management  Yileighkheri

This video by Yileighkheri begins with the idea of relieving today’s people from the great stress that they suffer. Proclaiming that stress is an inescapable chronic disaster, he suggests certain guidelines for individuals to manage emergency stress on the spot. Consisting of a series of videos including “When Others Aren’t Aware of Your Discontent,” “When Your Whole Body Aches and Is Stiff,” “When You Are Suddenly Hit by Exhaustion on the Street,” and “When You Need a Vacation to Loosen up Your Body and Mind,” this work records the artist’s performances in unexpected locations such as flower gardens and buses.



Workshop


Tape Casting Workshop  Mark Jenkins

In Mark Jenkins’ playful “Tape Casting Workshop,” participants will create castings with packing tape and plastic wrap, which make sculpturing easy. Participation in the workshop will involve no restriction of any kind such as age, and the participants will be able to make castings either of their own bodies or of objects that they bring. The artist will then turn these works into cheaply manufactured street installations. With the artist, the participants will explore how their tape sculptures will be situated in which contexts of the city.


Making an Urban Life Map  June Kim, Donghee Park

The "Making an Urban Life Map" workshop stems from the critique by the architect Christopher Alexander, who argues that modern architecture ignores the opinions of the prospective residents in the process of building buildings, and therefore buildings which, in fact, are not suitable for residents are built. Through his work, he has inspired others to think about ways to allow the intervention and participation of the residents in the whole process. In this workshop, the participants will walk around the Hongdae area and experience Alexander's thoughts while performing given tasks and consciously looking for spaces that make the city and the people alive and whole. Once places that seem to have life in them are found, these will be marked and turned into a map, through which the participants will experience the process of creating an artwork. The participants will program their mobile phones using Python programming language and explore routes in the city that have been randomly selected by a computer program. When they find spaces that are alive and whole, the participants will take and send photographs to each other in real
time, and they in turn will look at the map that is being updated in real time and adjust their action according to the changing map. Through this collaborative process, the participants will observe, update, discuss, and complete the Life Map.


Connecting Dot. Dot. Dot.  Eune Grace Jung

At this process-oriented creative workshop, the participants will look at what it is that connects the individual to the street and to others. In the midst of fast-moving life and sensually provocative surroundings, it is difficult for us to feel such connections deeply. Moreover, it is all too easy to forget that we are, in essence, all connected even though we exist separately, like dots, in the universe. In order to move beyond passive and consumptive relationships, this workshop will use art therapy methods and creative art-making. The participants will first explore their inner voices and inner wisdoms, so that they can look inside to unfix fixed ideas, to learn what is already there, and to experience other individuals’ ideas resonate within the group. After exploring potentials for communication and creation, the participants will once again examine relationships between individuals, with the city, with the objects in the city. As such, the workshop will concentrate not on producing an outcome but on connecting the dots to bring out the links that one has created based on what is already there. Like connecting dots to make a line, it will involve both discovery and creation.

Workshop participation application: gallery@sangsangmadang.com


Events

Pin Hole Box, 80 + 1 | http://www.80plus1.org
5 PM-9 PM, 9/4 (Fri.)-9/7/2009 (Mon.)

Have you ever been to Linz Austria? If you haven’t had the chance to see its Main Square, the Danube, and the Ars Electronica Center Simply walk by the PIN HOLE  and—voila!—here they are, the people, the place, all of it. Everything is possible; a smile, a joke, a gesture, a blink, or even a dance, and nothing is planned. Then how do people in Linz see you? Exactly! There is another PIN HOLE box installed in the Base Camp of 80+1 on the Main Square of Linz where your every move is shown and observed. You may think that such a project must be extremely complicated, right? In fact it’s not complicated at all. Simply a laptop and internet connection can already make it happen! Now the Pin Hole cases have started their journey to various destinations. You may just run into one by accident, who knows! Check out our daily schedule for a PIN HOLE encounter with nothing but surprises!


PARK(ing) Day | http://www.parkingday.org

Originally created by Rebar, a San Francisco-based art and design collective, PARK(ing) Day is an annual, one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks. Anyone can participate in PARK(ing) Day, though it is strictly a non-commercial project, intended to promote creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, unscripted social interactions, generosity, and play.

※ For more information, please refer to the Sangsangmadang website; here(http://blog2.sangsangmadang.com) and the PARK(ing) Day Seoul website at http://my.parkingday.org/group/seoul (English).



Seminar


Seminar 1: The Urban and Art
7 PM - 9 PM, 10/9/2009 (Fri.)

Henri Lefebvre once stated, “the word ‘creation’ will no longer be restricted to works of art but will signify a self-conscious activity, self-conceiving, reproducing its own terms, adapting these terms and its own reality…, being its own creation.” In this context, to understand the system and history of a city is a way to understand the conditions of human life and to search for ways of changing those conditions. In addition, it is very important to understand the contexts and histories of Korean cities to understand further the meanings and influences of various works that explore cities that are being created right now in Korea. This first seminar reads different aspects of the city. By utilizing diverse tools that humans use to understand objects or incidents, the participants will suggest ways of reading the city and explore ways of reading the city from today’s artistic points of view.


Seminar 2: Subversion and a Stroll
4 PM-6 PM, 10/10/2009 (Sat.)

When hope for political subversion was non-existent over ten years ago, many people looked for such possibilities in art and culture. Today, however, only very few attempt to subvert society through art or even discuss such ideas. Of course, there have always been artists who come out to the streets and create art, and the number is growing. The artworks displayed in Picnic on the City clearly reveal the characteristics of urban art. At this seminar, a presenter will adopt a standpoint of criticizing various works that intervene in the city—ranging from works that attempt to intervene in the city from the personal realm of everyday life to public works that intervene in the city on a large scale—and panelists with different opinions will discuss the topic among themselves and also with the audience.
Presentation: “Subversion and a Stroll: The Social Possibility of Artistic Praxis” | Panel discussions

 

※ The seminars are planned and conducted jointly with Moonji Cultural Institute Saii.

Paradise Lost

June 3rd - July 14th, 2009

Opening  June 3rd, 2009, 6PM
Artist Talk  June 27th, 2009, 4PM

A routine of sculpture and blind pieta

Kim Noam

  Pieta, a headless greyhound, a carnivore’s skull that looks like saber-toothed tiger, humors and blood that haven’t yet dried up, persistently dropping skin and muscles, rotten body, and the remains of a statue(彫像).
  Yi Sangjun’s Solo Exhibition ‘Paradise Lost’, presented by Gallery Sangsangmadang stands on a line of broadening aesthetic realm of sculpture since 1980s. One can say that contemporary art, newly paid attention during late 20th and early 21th centuries has came along with boom of photography and sculpture areas.

Lee Sukju  Photographics Exhibition MAUM Three

www.cyworld.com/soar0108
blog.naver.com/soar0108