Artist statements and Articles
상징과 비극
비극은 인간에게만 존재한다. 그것은 인간의 마음이 인간의 내부에 있지 않고 감각의 바깥과 상징 언어 내부의 사이에서 독자적으로 존재하기 때문이다. 언어와 지각은 감각적 경험을 규합하여 이성적 조망을 가능하게 하며, 이러한인간 이성과 감각적 경험의 괴리가 비극의 운명적 형태이다.
이미 발화는 태어나지 않은 아이를 ‘아버지를 죽일 자’로규정했다. 아버지 라이오스, 테베의 왕은 스스로 저지른 죄가 야기한 신탁에 두려움을 느끼고 아이를 버린다. 라이오스의 죄책감은 그가 신탁을 무시하는 대신 이에 적극적으로 대처하게 동력으로써 오히려 예언을 실현하기 시작한다. 언어의 상징체계와 이성의 조망능력이 없는 동물은 비극을 경험하지 못한다. 오이디푸스는 자신의 과거와 연관된 사실이 하나하나 밝혀질 때마다 불안해하고 두려워한다. 희곡은 살아온 매 순간이 예상치 못한 방향으로 귀결하여 비극으로 치닫는 과정을 순차적으로 보여준다.
만약 오이디푸스가 그런 조망을 하지 않았더라면? 그는 여전히 행복하게 이오카스네의 남편이며 테베의 존경받는왕, 스핑크스를 무너뜨린 현지자이다. 그러나 판단과 조망에 의해, 그 모든 감각적으로 정당한 사건들 사이에 연쇄적인과 관계가 성립할 때 비로소 비극이 발생하는 것이다.
스핑크스의 역할 : 짐승과 인간의 차이
스핑크스는 테베로 가는 오이디푸스에게 운명적인 수수께끼를 던진다. ‘아침에는 네 발, 점심에는 두 발, 저녁에는 세발인 동물이 무엇이냐.’ 오이디푸스가 이 질문에 답하지 못했더라면, 인간에 대한 서사적 통찰이 없었더라면, 이 이야기는 오이디푸스가 스핑크스에게 죽는 사건은 될지언정,비극일 수는 없었을 것이다. 수많은 사람들을 죽인 질문에오이디푸스는 답한다. ‘그것은 인간이다.’
스핑크스의 눈에 비친 인간은 주체가 아니다. 이 수수께끼는 스핑크스가 동물적 감각계를 가지고 있다는 것을 이해해야만 풀 수 있는 문제이다. 마치 육질을 발라내고 뼈만을취하는 것과 같이, 언어의 단순화 과정에 수반한 폭력성은각각의 객체를 구성하는 다채로운 질료를 거세하고 공통점을 추출한다.
숲을 잠행하는 늑대의 오감이 인식하는 개별적 나무들과인간이 그것을 ‘나무’ 라고 부를 때, 실제와 상징은 좁힐 수없는 엄청난 간극을 선언한다. 이렇듯, 스핑크스는 짐승의감각으로 삶과 시간성, 감각체로서 매 순간 존재하는 인간이라는 종을 수수께끼의 형식으로 묘사한 것이고 오이디푸스는 그 시간성과 인과성을 조망하여 이해함으로써 인간의 평생을 은유한 이미지를 한 단어로 수렴한다. 스핑크스를 이긴 현지자적 능력으로 삶을 총체적으로 이해한 오이디푸스는 자기 눈을 원망하며 찌른다. 코러스는 한탄한다.
“그대는 자신의 운명과, 운명에 대한 통찰력 때문에 불행해지신 것이옵니다. 내 차라리 그대를 몰랐더라면!”[ii]
이오카스네의 행복한 남편 오이디푸스, 시비를 거는 어떤노인을 죽였을 뿐인 오이디푸스, 사랑스러운 딸들의 아버지, 발목이 묶여 버려진 저주받은 자식의 서사가 한 풍경에서 그려질 때 비로소 각각의 순간, 행복의 경험들은 비극의장치가 된다.
발화와 살붙임
오이디푸스에서 사건을 전개시키는 축은 바로 발화다. 라이오스는 아들이 자신을 죽이리란 신탁을 받고, 오이디푸스는 코린토스에서 어머니와 살을 섞고 사람들에게 ‘차마눈뜨고 볼 수 없는 자식들을 보여주게 될 운명’으로 장차낳아준 아버지를 죽인다는 예언을 듣는다. 왕비 이오카스네는 스핑크스를 없앤 자에게 왕위를 주고, 그와 결혼하겠노라고 선언한다. 또 테베에 역병이 돌 때 오이디푸스가 청해 받은 예언, 그 땅에 오욕을 불러온 자, 라이오스의 살해자를 벌주고 내쫓으라는 것 등이다. 이야기 속에서 선행된발화들은 각 인물들의 두려움을 바탕으로 자라나고 육화하며 실현되고 인과를 맺는다. 이 과정은 언어 상징에서 자유로울 수 없는 인간의 한계를 표상한다. 인간의 마음은 신체 외부와 언어 발화 내부의 모종의 질료적 공간에서 마치제 3의 무엇처럼 독자적으로 꿈틀거리며, 이러한 언어와실제 감각적 삶의 거대한 괴리가 비극을 잉태하는 것이다.
눈과 몸뚱이
이제 발화는 모두 사건이다. 이야기의 끝에서 모든 것을 알아버린 오이디푸스는 자살한 부인의 장신구로 눈을 찌른다.그런데 오이디푸스는 왜 자살하지 않고, 제 눈을 공격했을까? 그것은 그에게 비극을 조망하게 한 주체적 기관이눈이었기 때문이다. 비극을 벗어나기 위한 가장 타당한 방식은 죽음이 아니라 짐승-즉 몸뚱이가 되는 것이다. 동물은자살하지 않는다. 결국 눈이 먼 오이디푸스는 자살할 이유가 없는 즉자적 (몸뚱이) 존재로서 비로소 비극의 틀을 벗어날 수 있다. 비극이 바로 서사임을 이해한 오이디푸스는눈-이성-주체를 파괴함으로써 조망자로서의 주체를 부정하고 보지 못하는 존재, 더듬기만 가능한 몸뚱이로 자신을환원시켜 이성의 죄악을 갚고자 한다.
[ii] P83, 1345, 소포클레스 비극 전집, 천병희 옮김, 도서출판 숲
작가의 글 중에서
작가 노트 중 발췌
예술 작업은 소통을 위한 것이 아니라 세상이 보여줄 수 있는 현상의 단면을 포착하는 것이다. 작업으로 엮인 현상들은 문학적 몽타주로서, 일종의 선율이나 색감으로 드러나며, 이렇게 감각적으로 짜인 언어에는 형과 색만 있을 뿐 의미적 위계나 질서는 존재하지 않는다. 타로 카드 리딩은 우연히 끌어올린 상징들, 증명이 불가능한 것들을 엮어서 구상적인 이미지를 그려내는데 그 힘이 있다. 관객과 작가가 특정한 시간과 공간을 공유하며 언어로 표상되는 상징 체계 너머의 또 다른 층위의 상징 도구를 이용해 관객의 고민과 삶의 형태를 그린다. 이 과정에서 관객과의 발화 자체를 예술이 소통 도구, 메세지 전달-체(體)로서의 오브제라는 생각에 대한 메타포적 질료로 이해한다.
미술관에 상주하는 작가와 관객이 타로카드를 매개로 나누는 대화는 두 사람이 구성하는 소셜- 바디 스케이프로서 질감의 표면화 과정이다. 정해진 공간에서 벌어지는 예상치 못한 발화를 통해 공간은 생각과 습관의 환기를 위한 통로 역할을 수행한다. 관객은 방문, 대화, 떠남의 통과의례를 겪으며 작가와 감각적이고 개인적인 경험을 공유함으로써 특정한 시간과 장소의 사건과 관계를 맺는다.
타로카드에서 보이는 상징은 개별 이미지들이지만 리딩에 의해 매번 다양한 방식으로 무한한 의미 조합이 가능하다. 카드 상징은 이야기의 의도적 비약을 위한 촉발체로 전혀 관계 없어 보이는 사건들이 이미지로 엮여 상대의 인생과 가치관을 유추하고 파고들며 동시에 작가가 가지고 있는 상징 체계의 개념들 안으로 관객을 호출한다.
우주의 시작과 끝을 알 수 없어 외부-내부가 따로 없다. 그러나 지구 안의 한 점에서는 펼쳐진 공간이 하나의 별자리로 보인다. 이처럼 발화와 내용이 별개의 것이 아닌 상징과 발화가 현실의 구체적인 파편으로서 또 하나의 현실로 존재하는, 아무것도 무엇을 재현하거나 표상하지 않는 세계. 마치 ‘제망(제석천의 그물-製網)’, 그 구슬 하나의 맺힘처럼, 각자에게 맺힌 상(像)을 응시하며 각자의 입지를 짐작하는 것만이 가능하다.- 이 지점에서 이미 진실도 거짓도, 과거도 미래도 없이 조망 불가한 광대한 구조 안에서의 파편 읽기는 관객과 작가가 작당한 살아서 꿈틀대는 이미지로서, 서로가 서로의 존재를 규정하는 매개로서, 기억 속에 잔상으로 남는다.
An exhibition of the work of artists residents at CeRCCa,
Center for Research and Creativity Casamarles.
Liliya Lifanova
Vivek Chockalingam
Exhibition: from 23rd April to 7th May 2011.
Place: Espai d’Art Les Quintanes, Llorenc del Penedes.
After the exhibitions of the artists in residence at CeRCCa in 2010, the center and L’Espai d’Art Les Quintanes continue their collaboration by offering the public presentation of the first residents of 2011: Yun Jeong Hong, Liliya Lifanova and Vivek Chockalingam.
In the exhibition, 'En prueba del carino que les profesa su hijo, les dedica su foto en prueba del carino que les profesa’, the work of artist Yun Jeong Hong, an artist originally came from Korea, and working and living in Illinois, proposes a labyrinthical pathway through memory from everyday objects. The installation consists of object collation and study pieces in which Yun Jeong Hong expresses her interest towards the object as a container of experiences. Playing between reality and fiction, the artist has used wool, textiles and domestic objects transforming them into a materialized immobile landscape through the obsessive and omnipresent use of cement as a unifying element. Memories, framed in the structure of a bed aged by time, breathe powerlessly, stuffed and heavy. The monumental sculpture is accompanied by collection pieces of subtle and disturbing nature that work as laborious transformations of traces of fictitious pasts by using delicate materials such as glass, copper, weaved textile and old photographs. The installation is framed by the projection of a written text that appears on the back of one of the photos. This text, which in itself is rhetoric and absurd, gives the perfect title to the whole work.
The art practice of Liliya Lifanova (American, born Kyrgyzstan), on the contrary, emanates a feeling of impermanence and fantasy. 'The Flying Carpet Project' is the result of a collaboration between the artist, the 5th grade students of the School Les Cometes de Llorenç del Penedes, and a group of local stitchers. Inspired by the myths and the nomadic traditions of her native Kyrgyzstan, the artist held a workshop where the children were involved in the creation of a felt carpet. However, the workshop was not merely a didactic activity but an experience where the children disclosed to the artist the location of their magical, real and imaginary places at Cal Figueres and its environments, the farmhouse where the workshop was held. Through careful production (costumes, props and staging), Liliya Lifanova created a dream like, magic scenario, where the children were urged to access their inner wizards so as to imbue their work with magic. The felt pieces made by the children were then sewn together, by a group of women from the village, to create a flying carpet. In The espai d’Art Les Quintana you will have the possibility to contemplate the precious object and see a selection of edited material filmed during the workshop. Along with 'The Flying Carpet Project' Liliya Lifanova presents ‘Untitled (Newspapers from January-March 2011 Robert family Llorenç del Penedes)’ a work based on meditative repetition. It comprises over 5000 pieces made with newspapers that the family Robert accumulated in their home between January and March 2011. The result is a spectacular landscape-archive where the patient, dedicated and healing action of the artist is reflected. In contrast to the work of Yun Jeong Hong, Liliya Lifanova’s use of wool and newspaper is not as much a repository of memories but the raw material from where to create a dream world based on nomadic impermanence as the condition of the artist.
The work of an artist and designer Vivek Chockalingam from Bangalor (India), 'Ojala' rest in an intermediate indefinite state between these two proposals. This uncertainty is present not only in his methodology which is going through between different creative disciplines, but also regarding the materials used and the concept of the piece. The origin of the expression 'Ojala', a Castilianism of common use in our country is interpreted by Vivek Chockalingam through the concept ‘Insa Allaah’ an expression popularly used in countries of the Arab world that could be translated as 'If God wills'. This concept is defined by the artist as ‘used when something intended to be done in the future, but not as a certainty but as an uncertainty. That is: beauty lies in the acceptance that nothing is certain and whatever ultimately happens is the way for you to find truth and happiness’. These areas of uncertainty and emptiness are understood by the artists as unique opportunities to undertake new challenges. Vivek Chockalingam has been inspired by this concept to create a multifunctional and ambiguous structure that reflects upon the possibility to become something that is located in between to be functional, nor not to be. The desire of change and impermanence, the will to be differently playing with the dualism of the concepts of Yun Hong Jeong and Liliya Lifanova: the tendency of the historicist immobility through memory, and the longing for change and transformation. 'Ojala' rest then in a state of transitoryness, emphasizing this stage as precondition to create a space for creativity with practical realization. By transforming chairs’ given for granted utility, Vivek Chockalingam creates then a cosmology of possibilities and impossibilities, a dualism that runs through the works of the exhibition. We would be glad if you could visit to reflect upon and enjoy this art practices of the artist visiting Casamarles as artist residency of March and April, 2011.
- written by Pau Cata, CeRCCa
<Episteme> Artist statement by Yun Jeong Hong 2010
I am interested in objects and their lives. This interest manifested in my recent piece “preserving death and the shapes of living things (2009),” at the Champaign County Historical Museum. In this installation, I exhibited the “Wilson collection,” an invented collection of found and created objects combined with and against the backdrop of an actual historical museum collection. This collection includes Victorian-style moss terrariums; a dead fish collection in resin; skins of animals; holed hamburger patties coated with resin after having been eaten by ants; and animal porcelain collections referencing ancient Chinese taxonomy in the fiction of Borges as discussed by Foucault. This exhibition revealed to me the primary subjects of my artwork: archaeology and taxonomy, history and fiction, functions of the museum, collections as evidence in fiction, positionings and gestures, ontological identifications, death and life and, finally, “things.” My interest in fabricating stories continues to grow into an investigation of objects that embody a desire to be something: objects that exist between the tensions of internal narratives and external spaces.
After the installation of the site-specific project, in order to shed light on the tension underpinning internal and external drives, my artistic praxis has recently consisted of fabricating objects that demonstrate a gesture of becoming, or becoming objects that exist in between the tensions of internal desires and external frames. My first experience following this interest fabricates a staircase, titled “Episteme (2009),” referencing an epistemological structure and its connections/disconnections to a real architectural space. The next sculpture project, “Anti-Oedipus (2010),” represents a floor that extends organically, conveying the will of the splintered materials. As these fragments proliferate and collide with one another, their evolving configurations impart the desire to become a floor, as well as the divergent motion of escaping. The topographical surface mirrors the structure of the narrative without a known story: analogous to an autonomous machine, it produces a plot without a protagonist.
How do bodies stand up by themselves? How do sound and flesh hold up the body-the body as one unity, as a structure having its own permanency? My first work from the wooden sculpture series, “Episteme(2009),” has two different identities related with bodily Gestalt. The first Identity is a growing/extending floor, and the second is an unfolding moment. This structure does not have a base, inner structure to support the whole body like other practical staircases. This staircase lays between the typicality of body and space memory and the unexpected varietal monster's screaming, and creates the tension of a stage, like an actor in a play who is just about to stand up. As an unfolding moment, the staircase is the memory of body experience and, like Duchamp’s staircase, it doesn’t have a shadow since it is focuses on time, not space, and on momentum instead of substance. It has already lost all physical character and exists as a tracing from the memory of the body.
Like in Francis Bacon's painting, to break down orders and rules and invite people in-between experiences, we need a frame in advance: the frame as a stage and the frame as a body. For this reason, the stair extends from the organism of the architectural space and stands by itself. Smashed bodies exist in the sense of exceptional beings or monsters, and their screaming encountered at the border of animalism. A scream might be the only way of escaping from the body and the cage while having the will of life or death. Through this screaming-drawing, the animalism of the subject finally appears, having escaped from the body-cage moment through howling.
-from a note of artist
<Preserving death and shapes of living things- for 1793; to celebrate the birth of museum and the head of the king> - artist statement 2009
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Since 2007, conveying meaning beyond
object and text began to emerge as one of my major artistic interests. My
methods have been various and have included painting, drawing, installation,
text annotation, and even jewelry making. Using a wide breath of methods and
materials has allowed me to play with my identity and position as an artist.
I have pretended to be an excavator, an archeologist, and a recorder at the
same time in a fictional encyclopedia excavation project (in 2004), and as a
person who fell in love with an unknown species of tropical fish at the
Breeding Guppy Project in 2007. After I began my master’s degree, I created
another persona for myself, as a fish trainer who had a passion for training
tropical fish. After this, I found the imaginary character of “Mr. Wilson”
for a museum project. The character of Mr. Wilson was a donor and collector
for a local museum, where he was considered to be a 19th century Anglo-Saxon
expert. This name references the personified volleyball from the movie Cast Away, and also David Hildebrand
Wilson who created “The Museum of Jurassic Technology”. In this context,
naming my character “Mr. Wilson” has direct implications for meta-museum
playing. In the spring of 2009, I began my first project involving the ideas of “preserving death and the shapes of living things”, in the city of Champaign, Illinois, a semi-rural college town home to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was an installation work in the Champaign County Historical Museum, as a part of my study about a site-specific approach incorporating a methodological view. I had a chance to exhibit the “Wilson collection”, which is a fake collection combined with an actual museum collection. This collection included Victorian-style moss terrariums, which reference the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, and miniature terrariums which have an abridged nature to reflect real nature. Anther part of collection was consisted of sliver cubic rings made from fish flesh, and include a dead fish collection in resin, skins of animals, papers and holed hamburger patties coated with resin after having been eaten by ants, and animal porcelain collections which reference ancient Chinese taxonomy in the fiction of Borges as discussed by Foucault. This exhibition was the first work that allowed to me to bring to the foreground my central issues: archaeology and taxonomy, history and fictions, the function of the museum, collections as evidence of fiction, interest in positioning and gesture, being-something or someone, death and life, and finally, “things” and names. Playing with context and naming, using moss to represent nature and capturing nature in the miniature terrariums gave me a chance to experience the relationships between language and things, truth and fiction, and death and life. | The subtitle of this project was “For 1793: to celebrate the birth of the museum and the head of the king.” This title is drawn from the events of the year 1793 in France, in which King Louis XVI was publically beheaded in the Place de la Concorde, also the birth year of the Louvre Museum. The public started to believe that to kill things and to watch killing is synonymous with “to have”. I propose that between the moment of death and birth, there are compelling objects which have another life and meaning in that specific space reserved for public eyes. One person’s possession is laid down in an undead zone, in a place that exists for eyes and for seeing, but lacks substance. The motivation for this project was to pay homage to the birth of the eye and to reflect on the scheme of museums. |
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<Guppy
Breeding: Being Orchid> – Fragmentary Thoughts on Drawing2007 |
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Review of <Into Drawing II> Between Fiction and Reality By Nayoung Jung, Curator of
SOMA Museum of Art Western power disseminates its
ideology, and provides food products to the world. Historical fact discovered
while restoring a small book – a Renaissance relic. Arguments over education
for a new generation, living from “the age of loss” to “the age of oil”. If something, like these examples, is
seen in language or writing, it seems to exist, however briefly, otherwise we
might deny its existence. Yunjeong Hong is enthralled by this. Seriously
concerned with the power of books, she is presently devouring books on
postmodern theory, her latest infatuation. By manipulating books, she
acknowledges their integrity by compiling bibliographies or making
annotations. The imaginary
situations she creates with them confuse viewers. Hong’s work forms a new,
unfamiliar layer among our elaborate social structure, by setting unrelated
elements and methods into its logic. Time transition; simultaneous
attitudes; an activity forum; intertextual images; making art with exposed
signifiers by arranging images and information and excluding isolated
judgments; reading and making simultaneously. Exposing the structure of a
labyrinth; and an apparatus for metafiction, another “I”; differing objects
in a similar world; and trying to achieve something even though it is just my
wish.-Artist’s note With intuitively selected material
from her perspective, Hong applies intertextuality and metafiction to her
work, to bring about imagined reality. We may well be aware the work is
imaginary, but may also ask if it is real, so she conceals her intent and
simply adds text to a phenomenon, without making conclusion. Hong’s work is a
process of collecting imaginary evidence from fictitious situations, thus
showing a mix of reality and fiction. Oilism Project (2003), Excavation
Restoration Project (2004), exists in this context. Guppy Breeding: Being
Orchid (2006), is also interesting in that she fabricated a story based on
her knowledge on guppy breeding. “This work aims to present a
pseudo-scientific attitude through which orchid shapes result from a
breeder’s fantasy. Classified in terms of function, the evolution of guppy’s
bearing resemblance to orchids presents a new perspective on perception,” she
explains. Hong shakes the system of perception by combining a breeder’s
attitude to a beautiful species of plant, with an unscientific assumption
that fish turn into plants. A composite word from the scientific names for
guppy and orchid; captivating, realistic images; explanations based on a
breeder’s experience. All these Hong uses to narrow the gap between reality
and fiction. Despite the knowledge and information
infused by the education system and mass media, viewers always reach their
own different interpretations and understandings. This fact captivates Hong.
She compiles and selects information, as viewers reach conclusions according
to their ability to acquire and understand information. Hong’s discovery of
meaning in diverse interpretations, not it the work itself, shows a
postmodern attitude. It follows then that, what brings life and meaning to
her work are the spectators. -from catalog of Into Drawing II, 2007, Seoul, S.Korea |
