POSCO Art Museum presents [Living as an Artist] with artists who have lived as an artist over 20 years at least. [Living as an Artist] opens for the public from 17th March 2021 to 27th April 2021. The exhibition does not concentrate on the same theme nor share the conceptual discourse, however, it shows more about the individual lives as an artist and their artworks based on the varied background. Thus, the exhibition aims to state the lives of the artist is performative and agonising. Despite entailing agonies artists are willing to develop their performativities.
POSCO Art Museum Installation View (2021) ©POSCO Art Museum
Even though there is no exact connection between the 7 participating artists (KIM Nari, LEE Jeonglok, JUN Bo-Young, HONG Insook, JEONG ZikSeong, CHOI Soon-IM, CHOI Jeong Yun) they resonate in the exhibition halls by combining their spiritual response leaning towards ‘art’. The article highlights selected artworks and artists.
Insook HONG (1973~) has been working as a printmaker from her master’s by focusing on the texts and Korean characters with compiling folktale. In the exhibition, she presents her life long artworks such as Ann, Nyeong recent works and relatively old works such as the series of Letter Landscape.
Ann and Nyeong (2020) each 110x190cm, Painting on Hanji, Paper printing
During her isolated time in Suwon due to Covid, she constantly thought about the comfort and well being of human. She asked herself ‘Can letter console and comfort human?’, and stated;
Why do we continuously spend a hard time/ But some says tomorrow comes after to be more struggle/ the unknown disasters make us know/ newly significant one letter, letter landscape Ann, Nyeong I am drawing.
Installation view (2021) POSCO Art Museum
She is working on the new letter landscape series and preparing her Solo exhibition. Her artistic spirit by using paper printing is slow but not outdated, caring for others and the artist herself. Surely, I assert that her consolation to others who are suffering relieves their deep concern by answering their comfort “Ann, Nyeong”.
Nari KIM (1967~) is a sculptor and installation artist. Most of her artworks are rooted in the faces of human as well as non-human particularly animals and Buddha. In the exhibition, the resonance of displaying her artworks makes sharp pain and ambiguous sorrow. The faces she created have their own stories. For instance, she started to make Buddha statues when she was suffered from life long nightmare, and someone advised that making buddha would help to get off it.
Installation View (2021) POSCO Art Museum
The sidewall of the exhibition room is composed of her drawings that bring varied aesthetical interpretations as well as feminist inspirations. Artist notes in the exhibition reveal her identity as an artist and define who is the artist.
“I am less useful than people who make mops and brooms, but I am the person who makes a snowman and significantly useful in some aspects such as ‘teardrop’ and ‘the light of dawn’”
Through these notes, I reconsider the usage of art, artwork and usefulness of the artists.
CHOI Jeong-Yun (1964~) is a sculptor and installation artist focusing on the sword. He is internationally recognised by presenting his works The Flesh of Passage in a special exhibition of the 58th Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Centre (ECC).
Installation View (2021) POSCO Art Museum
His installation in the exhibition arouses a surrealistic atmosphere by using extremely different and irrelevant materialities salt and thread. He once asserted that his key medium ‘salt’ is symbolic which contains the meaning of wealth, power, religiousness and life.[1] He also mentioned the shape of artwork as a flower that symbolises a sexual organ (origin of life) and the artwork has a vivid colour scheme with a fluffy texture. From my interpretation, it has vertical lines surrounded by salt which means power and the long linear shape seems to emphasise masculinity. The combination of two aspects inspires the integrity of dichotomous perspectives towards gender, power and labour.
Lives as an artist might be always uncertain, unstable and vague. They create something that could be unuseful rather than brooms or mops. Despite the ambiguity, they keep developing and constantly progressing their own theory and philosophy. Therefore, life as an artist would be uncertain, but the resulting artwork never can be certain and manifest.
[1] CHOI JEONG YUM Artist Note, http://khalifagallery.com/choi-jeong-yun/
