Tae-joon Hyeon: Made in Korea
Sunshine of A-Jeo-Si
Kim No-am l Director of Gallery Sangsangmadang
Why Tae-joon Hyeon?
It is impossible to describe a person’s behavior and work in a few lines. Especially when the theme is very broad, crosses over various genres and forms, and handles several layers of visual culture.
Hyeon would fall in this category. He was once a dreamer and an open-hearted wanderer who collected, created, and introduced unusual objects. Through drawings, comics, illustrations, and essays, Hyeon pleases and puzzles us at the same time with his unique taste and by depicting how he felt during the work process.
“…personally I like the Hong-dae(Hong-ik University) area because it’s a place where young people gather, and that’s where the new cultural scenes are concentrated in.” – from an interview 2005 –
He once commented on his affection for the Hong-dae area in an interview, and it was probably fate that invited him as the first artist to Gallery Sangsangmadang launched in the Hong-dae area.
Why did we choose Tae-joon Hyeon after all the brain-racking discussions? Does this mean he has stepped up from being just another subculture artist and has entered a more refined level?
We focus on Hyeon as he represents those whose youth were shaped in the culture of typical college districts and also due to his significant role in forming such cultures, as he spent his time in the Hong-dae area during the 80s and the 90s. Of course he is not the only one with these credentials. Actually there are so many of us who have contributed to shaping the area as it is now by spending their young college years drinking, dancing and wandering around with hangovers in the Hong-dae area. Looking back, the Hong-dae area has been spotlighted as a place of a unique culture since the 2002 World Cup, with a tight interaction between the consumer culture of mass democracy and high capitalism as well as a being a symbolic place of youth culture.
An anti-academic, nihilistic and individualistic world view has been promoted in front of universities which symbolize the typical Korean conservative academic atmosphere. Now it is the time for those issues of resistance and recreation to be brought to the surface as main issues in the aesthetic critique of our generation. Hyeon, as well as his contemporaries who are now in their 40’s, is able to introspect on himself and contemplate the prospects of the future. We Koreans often call men of this age group A-Jeo-Si, which means middle-aged man. With bittersweet experiences and the aesthetic taste of their youth, they involuntarily have arrived at an age to be role models for the next generation.
The significance of this Solo Exhibition comes from the fact that his works were a deviation from or a break through against the ideology unique to 1970’s Korean society, where all that mattered was rapid economic growth, the demand for economic Puritanism, and a workers’ mindset. This viewpoint is grounded on his eccentric characters, way of talking, taste, imagination and rhetoric as well as his works that deconstruct the aesthetic and ethical norm of established traditions. On the other hand, the current standard of taste and competence of common art appreciators and critics today have come far enough to understand his work properly.
It is necessary for us to find an appropriate way to understand and evaluate Hyeon’s work and his aesthetic world. It is reasonable to expect a certain success in this undertaking since the surroundings and the cultural contexts where he was brought up are not too far from what average people experience in their lives. This is why we are looking forward to an encounter with his world.
Who would love an ‘A-Jeo-Si’
Often a person’s appearance and his or her interior don’t go quite match up. The artist’s personal traits are as follows: Hyeon is a friendly looking A-Jeo-Si, well-built, likes Korean spicy pork barbecue and sweet and sour pork, and is always soaked or stained with sweat. He seems to prove his existence with his own body. His fine physical presence even got him a call from a credit card company asking him to be in an advertisement campaign. Why are we looking for typical A-Jeo-Si features in him? And why do all men after their 30s merge into an A-Jeo-Si-type life style? Why was Hyeon so attracted to ‘A-Jeo-Si’ since his younger days? What makes an A-Jeo-Si so admirable?
The significance of Hyeon’s ‘A-Jeo-Si’ is revealed in areas of the human body like excrement, farts, and snot. The artist indulges in activities that only immature children might get excited to do, but this ‘A-Jeo-Si’ dares to expose himself to the whole world. The artist indulges in eating, which modern people who pursuit elegance and a shaped body often restrain from, like the “potlatch” of Polynesians or North American Indians.
In Korean society, the word ‘A-Jeo-Si’ is used as frequently as the word ‘A-Jum-Ma’ (a friendly word to call married or older women). However, rather than describing a man who has overcome social obstacles to successfully stand on his own, the word refers to a man who barely makes a living which prohibits him from being invited to major dignified social meetings. These days, the word may even convey a not so respectable characteristic.
The dictionary defines the word as; 1)a word to call a man in the same degree of relationship as parents, except brothers of father 2) a word to call unmarried younger brother of father 3) a familiar name to call an adult man 4) a word to call uncles 5) (North Korean) a word to call an older sister’s husband.
“A word to call a man who has not achieved a good social position…well, this doesn’t sound so nice ~. There is no reference to a kind and friendly average Joe, but being an A-Jeo-Si isn’t so bad as anybody might think, because A-Jeo-Si’s can often meet people very casually. Approved(?) An A-Jeo-Si can build relationships more easily without any personal interest, and people are also more generous when an A-Jeo-Si makes a mistake. I keep telling myself that it is good to be an A-Jeo-Si to enjoy all those privileges.
Sometimes people call me “teacher” to show respect, but then I soon get nervous with my words and behavior under the pressure of having to be exemplary. It even forces me to bear boring conversations which make my body uncomfortable. After that I realized how much happier it makes me to be called an A-Jeo-Si.
Considering that signifier and signified unite arbitrarily, Hyeon’s A-Jeo-Si could be read from a different context. It turns out to be a matter of text in the understanding of the artist.
The word ‘A-Jeo-Si’, which refers to the protagonist (Hyeon)’s other self in his illustrations and essays, is constantly confessing a narrative excluded from images that reflect authority, major discourses, and social order, which Hyeon questions. As repetition is a core factor in myth, the concept of A-Jeo-Si in his work is upgraded from a daily word to a symbolic word.
The aesthetics of an A-Jeo-Si creates a black comedy in the enlightenment poster series including ‘have an affair on every 18th (how-to-maintain-a-happy-family-movement)’, ‘kiss during bright day for the healthy society (anti-unhealthy kiss community)’, to escape from the standardized and generalized social ideology such as the patriarchal system taught to citizens with an anticommunist spirit and the Saemaeul Movement.
However in the context of modern popular culture, this symbolic ‘A-Jeo-Si’ is not necessarily paired with the word ‘A-Jum-Ma.’ Hyeon’s A-Jeo-Si is often matched with an ‘A-Ga-Si (miss)’ or a ‘So-Nyu (girl) in his work. Usually he uses the word ‘A-Jum-Ma’ to refer to the wife of a protagonist rather than what it means by definition.
Because the word A-Jeo-Si in his work gets paired with ‘A-Ga-Si’ or ‘So-Nyu’, the word becomes an attempt to dismantle the preexisting ‘language order’ and ‘aesthetic ethic’ without the artist’s intention. From a phenomenological perspective, such ‘black comedy’ or ‘humor’ as Hyeon’s unique ‘eroticism’ is being sarcastic about life and the desires of modern people. ‘A-Jeo-Sism’ and ‘eroticism’ unite passively to reveal the objectified 'sexual ideology' or 'sexual complex' of timid modern and disrupts the matrix of ethics and order.
How would it be if men like Richard Gear from Pretty Women fart, pick their nose, and sweat all over white eating?
Logic of Collection and Sence
Tae-joon Hyeon once owed a toy store in late 90s called 'Sinsiggongjaksil' and designed weird toys and rubbish objects. However, his unique traits are very complicated and suggest that he would be seen as someone who is a bit deviant from average people his age rather than simply a unique person.
He reminds us of the ideal child often descrived in children's journals from the 60s and the 70s introduced various themes of education and of a realistic mediocre boy from the 80s. He used to be a person who madly collected lifeless vintage toys or creepy and unusual objects.
