당신을 위해 준비했습니다
이우성 woosung Lee
학고재 갤러리 2017.12.07 ~ 2018. 01.07 월요일 휴관
당신에게 보내는 편지
My Dear
김승옥 소설 <서울 1964년 겨울>을 다시 읽었습니다. 이상하게 제가 사는 지금의 시간이 보이더군요.
문득 이 시간을 어떠한 방식으로 기록할 수 있을까 생각해 봤습니다. 한참을 그렇게 시간을 보내다가 그동안 그린 그림들을 봤습니다.
거기에 있는 여러 형태의 얼굴들은 누구를 향해 있을까.. 저에게 사람은 모든 것이 표정이고 메시지입니다. 그것을 그림으로 옮겨 그리는 것이 저의 작업이지요.
중요한 것은 우리가 같은 시간을 살고 있다는 것.
그것이 당신과 연결된 끈입니다.
행복하시고 건강하세요.
얇은 천에 옮겨 그린 그림들이 당신의 마음에 닿을 수 있기를. 제가 본 것을 담기에는 그림의 크기가 여전히 작습니다.
이우성 드림
A letter to you,
My Dear
I read Seungok Kim’s novel, Seoul, Winter 1964 again. Strangely enough, I saw the current times there. Then, I started thinking of ways to document our times. While engrossed in this thought, I looked at the paintings I have worked on. Where do the various figures in the paintings face? To me, people are all about facial expressions and messages. My work is bringing these expressions and messages into images. The most important aspect here is that we are all living through the same time. This is the string that connects us.
Be happy and healthy.
I wish my paintings on thin fabric reach your heart; yet these paintings are still too small to wholly contain everything I have seen.
Sincerely,
Woosung Lee
학고재 갤러리
이우성 홈페이지
오늘 밤 많은 것이 결정된다 Tonight, Many Decisions Will be Made_
천에 아크릴과슈, 젯소_210×210cm_2017
선생님의 손과 옷 주름 그리고 빈 컵 Teacher's Hand, Wrinkles on His Jacket, and Empty Glasses_
천에 아크릴과슈, 젯소_210×105cm_2017
빛나는 거리위의 사람들 Floating lights on the street
천에 아크릴 과슈, 젯소 300×543cm_2017
당신을 위해 준비했습니다 My Dear_
천에 아크릴과슈, 젯소_210×210cm_2017
"작은 단칸방에서 접었다 폈다 하며 그릴 수 있어 천 그림은 '88만원 세대'에게 적합한 매체이기도 하다"고 말했다.
................매일경제 인터뷰 중 이우성
.......2014년 '두산갤러리' 전시 『본업-생활하는 예술가』에서 그는
"현실 상황을 극복해보고 싶다는 생각에 일부러 큰 작품에 도전해 봤다"고 포부를 밝힌다.
불안정한 생계와 작업실을 옮겨 다니는 영세한 상황에 대한 대응으로서 걸개그림을 택했다는 설명은,
매체를 전환한 결정이 작업적 전략일 뿐 아니라
당시 88세대, 청년세대로 호명된 작가의 생존기술에 결부된 일종의 자기 양식임을 성토한다.
이후 얼굴이 잘린 몸들, 눈을 흘기고 작은 불을 들고 불구덩이 속으로 뛰어들던 익명의 얼굴들은 점차 시간이 지나면서
관계 속에서 이름을 가진 구체적인 얼굴들- 동년배의 동료들로 나타난다.
관계로부터도 거리를 뒀던 작가 역시 사회구성원으로서 그들과 다르지 않음을 인정하고 연대를 보이는 것일까......... 남웅의 글 중
늘 생각하고 있습니다. Always on my mind
캔버스에 아크릴 과슈 젯소 65x50cm 2017
여진 작가님 핸드폰 빛으로 불을 밝혀주세요.
Yejin, Please Light up the plashing light on your phone.
천위에 아크릴 젯소 210x210cm 2017
두 번 반복해서 그린 세진이 sejin. painted twice repeatedly
천 위에 아크릴릭 과슈, 젯소, 210x210cm 2017
83년생 이우성 작가의 개인전을 보고 왔습니다. 날이 매우 추운 평일의 대낮인데도
전시장에 사람들이 꽤 많았습니다.
작가는 인터뷰에서 '직접 만나고 관찰한 이들의 구체화를 통해 청춘들의 초상을 그리고 싶었다' 라고 합니다.
작가의 지인들로 추정되는 인물들을 보고 있으면 왠지 모를 공감.. 연민이 느껴지기도 했습니다.
마치 작가가 이야기 하는 당신이 나 인것 같기도 했습니다.
블로그를 둘러보니 누군가는 청춘이 흔들리는 모습이 걸개 그림과 잘 어울린다는 이야기에 끄덕끄덕..
동행했던 일행분 모두가 구입한 도록.
전시에 실리지 못했던 작품들도 있고, 전시 서문과 관련 평론글 까지 알차고 좋은 도록인 듯 합니다.
이우성 작가의 전시를 추천하며, 전시는 내년 1월 7일까지 입니다.
Reconstructing the World of pi-mak* *: pi-mak – 피막 (皮膜), membrane-like thin layer, film Woosung Lee – My Dear ● 1. In Woosung Lee's first solo exhibition Bul Bul Bul (2012), the space was overpowered by treacherous, toned-down figures painted in gouache. A group of people appear from the dark, as if they are being flashed. They expose themselves through the light as if they are being named. It is impossible to guess where they were or what they were doing before the light was flashed upon them. We only know that a certain gaze from outside the picture approached their territory, and as if they knew it was coming, they are staring back from the picture with a torch or a candle. The tension among their bodies sent out a message that these men are ready to burn something down, even if comes down to throwing themselves into the fire. Creation rises from violence, and creatures from destroying; this cycle revealed a carnivalesque moment in which creation and destruction connect with each other like the Apocolypse. While implying the state of the younger generation who are "born straight into hell," the figures in the painting were grotesque, impetuous, and ludicrous. ● It is not difficult to figure out the appearance of the men in the picture; however, determining their origins and identities is. There was also no clue indicating why all of them were young males. Some thought that this same-sex group revealing itself on the verge of a riot was depicting a subculture landscape of the homosexuality. Creating/painting this work was the act that brought the light into the place that used to be closed; and the group of people that light reviled became the group of the young males. The artist was labeled as a "young artist," and his following works regularly featured these inscrutable people with plain faces, forming a certain background and narratives; the narratives of these men, of course, were always intertwined with the gaze of the artist and with the artist himself. ● 2. Lee's works move onto banners from canvases and replace gouache with water-based paint and gesso. The strokes became thicker; the contrast between light and dark became simpler. Less details, thus less weight in forms. Since his works now require less time and has shed weight, he paints more pieces, transforming and even deteriorating them through production. Detailed shades and the depth of space are substituted by flat color planes, and the eye-catching patterns upon the flat paint layers create a rhythmical landscape. ● As a medium, banners have a more temporary aspect. It is easy to carry and transport, adaptable to diverse exhibit conditions, and convenient to store. It is able to keep up with the pace of the artist's gaze which shifts and intersects regions and mediums. Banners have been a tool for mass instigation and a makeshift medium for propaganda; however, the artist uses banners to document private moments. Most of the subject matters are gossips or news found in various media channels, or momentary scenes captured during his encounters and observation of people while he was out and about. Lee produces a series of subject matters, edits them, and frames them in a picture. The picture is accumulated on a flat surface which in turn is a collection of multiple layers of cloths. The banners are counted in plurals. The cloths are either hung on the wall or in the air, collecting and displaying the fragmental situations, which can't be summed up in one big map. Illustration, regularly practiced by the artist as a subsidiary to his paintings, has now risen to the surface. ● The banner as a screen for private documentations evokes different effects based on its placement. It intervenes into the typical meaning of the place by "exposing" the artist's imagery in public space. The banner, that is usually hanging and waving in the air, now creates a contrast with the surrounding physical environment and amplifies variant sentiments and meanings. These light-weighted forms sometimes accompany the sarcastic protest slogans against the government; sometimes they transform into event backdrops or goods. In its physical lightness, the banner interferes or mocks the reality on the streets and creates ripples by throwing meaningless images. ● On the other hand, Lee also assigns significance on the vertical structure of the banner. In the exhibition Pulling from the Front, Pushing from Behind (2015) at Art Space Pool, the focus is on the formative aspect of the banner as a hanging object. Installed in discrepant angles here and in parallel there, the cloths function as partitions that compart the space. They form pathways and create gaps, yet suggest a flow. The audience walking through these temporary pseudo-passages repeatedly connects and disconnects the images. ● The structure of the medium is much more reinforced in Lee's most recent exhibition Quizás, Quizás, Quizás (2017) at Amado Art Space, where he presented a series of illustrations using screen-tone sheets and pens. The banner is now compressed into the size of a tile, 11 cm (4.3 in) in height, and the colorless picture accentuates the density of the lines. While the accumulated banners were laid out in different patterns to encourage movement of the audiences previously, in contrast, now the pictures are arrayed in a row on actual scaffoldings and displayed in the units. The pictures are placed at eye level, side by side, to form a seemingly constant flow. ● What to be noted is the narration of the exhibition, in other words, how the images are put and displayed together. While the previous exhibitions "accumulated" the banners, this one "builds a frame," and transforms the space into a structure whose core is the horizontal line of pictures. The frame not only expands but also intersects; the flat picture that used to sway in a three dimensional landscape has now become a makeshift place that surrounds the air and embraces the participating bodies. ● The pictures that are lined up in identical size remind us of an online image viewer using horizontal scrolling. By laying out the images horizontally, the artist suggests a possible but muted connection among the individual cuts and moreover, among the empty spaces between the cuts. The same sized images that go all around the space lead the gaze of the audience as if they are following a stream of consciousness. The individual cuts seem to be depicting the outside world, the faces of the artist's friends, everyday places, and events on the news, then, however, they land at an intimate space of sexual fantasies. The images feel quite discontinuous, similar to randomly arranged single panel cartoons, but form a virtual connection through its identical dimensions. ● 3. The images follow the artist's everyday life. Inside them are the artist's footsteps and his thoughts that always walk ahead of his steps; however, the sum of the pictures are a mere accumulation of scenes, not a colligation of the whole world. The artist insists on direct hand paintings, his touches are light-weight yet rough. This seems to imply that the speed of daily life experienced by the artist is not entirely absorbed by the world. It is hard to determine if this is an act of distancing or failure to do so, or even a conscious representation of the failure. However, what we can understand, is that, when we end up in a position where we can't control its reality, the attitudes we can take on is to self-inflict isolation and retreat into the mirror image; to select from the flattened, yet fabricated reality. The subcultural nuance in Lee's early work of young male groups and the landscape of single panel illustrations can be a sensuous manifestation of these presumptions. ● The picture, compressed into a flat surface and stripped off contextual narratives, is a response and an intervention the world which is incoherent and thus impossible to adjust to; it may also serve as a tactic for adaptation. To adjust his breathing to the speed of the world, the artist has to fabricate and compress the landscape at his pace. When information overwhelms the consciousness, he brings in a rhythmical sense by fabricating and directing different memories and times. The image is a trace of imagination and desires that are projected through the fingertips. The image cannot be objective or generalized, because it is in fact the artist's imagery of his correspondence and discordance with the world, carved and evened out on a flat surface. One can say that the artist is moving away from the public space and submerging into the private space, into the intimate space of the body and soul; it can also be said that he is producing fantasies based on the symbolic systems and bringing them into a picture. Nonetheless, the gaze of the artist incessantly opens up to the world and intervenes, eventually avoiding fixation; a tactic to branch out across the separation of the world and the ego. ● While recognizing the conflict between the world and subjectivity, the artist becomes a keen and conscious observer of his own fragmentation and contradiction. For instance, his works on the recent candlelight rally overlap with his earlier works, which used (the) light as a central motive, tuning into the frequency of correspondence and discordance. Probably it may be explained this way. His participation in the series of mass rallies last winter left a variety of impressions in the artist's mind. A sense of foreignness was one of them, which rendered the symbols of rallies into stains and spots, flowing with the noises of the rally. Lee's video work exhibited in painting/daily document (2017) at soshoroom, reconstructs the flow of loud noises recorded at the rally sites. To the artist, the experiences of the rallies were such a spectacle that dispersed his mind. Coarse strokes overlap city lights with swirling snow and connect faces to footsteps and flags, clamors and saliva. Even though the artist is inside a world that is constantly approached by the outside and thus maintains no clear distinctions between subjects and objects, at the same time, he is not completely inside. To be more precise, the artist, participating in the world, is no longer the subject that is complete, but fragmented, and he consciously reveals this fact. ● The artist documents this experience in the moment of blurred boundaries as "foreignness." Though he doesn't dive into it, Lee steadily follows the foreign conditions and landscapes, and records their sense of discordance in pictures. He persistently follows his activist friends to the candlelight rallies every week, through his pen, or draws the procession of candlelight filling the alleys of Jongno, as seen in the banner work, Floating Lights on the Street (2016). Looking back at his earlier works, it can be seen as the figures on the tip of destructive violence have now expanded into a real and generate power of the people. The picture which was abruptly lit upon and questioned of its existence, now itself transmits the colorful lights of the secular world. Nonetheless, even at this moment, the artist keeps distance from his experience. Unlike the video work that exaggerates the sense of foreignness, the aerial views of Seoul and its streets filled with a parade of lights show the distance because such views can only be captured with the distance from the actual site. The highly charged tension and discord shown in the earlier works, forcefully hailed by light, transform the temperature of representation; from the dark allies of Nakwon-dong where the gay community gathers at night, to the lights of the mass crowding the city of Seoul. ● Fueled by the sense of discord and maladjustment, sometimes even of conflict, Lee fabricates landscapes into pi-mak* to tolerate and appropriate the foreignness. Along with the macro-historical scene seen from long distance, he draws a moment of encounter with his friend here and there, a face or place from a memory from not so long ago. The landscape undergoes private fabrications. Relationships are based on memory, but the memory is nothing but a weightless and swaying thin layer. Filtered by the artist's eyes, public events and landscapes such as processions and rallies are deprived of their heavy meanings and narratives. The light-weight landscape painted on a light-weight medium may be fabricated and hold a possibility of connecting, rather than evaporating. The situations created by eye contacts, colliding bodies, intercrossed limbs are not close enough. In contrast, this looseness implies the possibility of connection with any given circumstances. The loose threads coming out of the banners are like materialized lights; they are an allegory of connections, interconnecting the inside and outside of the image, an image and another, and the figures and the world. The meanings of individual images also connect with each other. The group of banners in the space visualizes a story, and forms the relationships among those images. The images hung in the air create chemistry and flirt with one another; they form a virtual neural network of images, which opens and closes the passages to the relationships. The banners are displayed and redisplayed in different compositions, creating different sequences and structures in the temporary space of every exhibition. ● The artist's documentations lay in the gap between the circumstances in which he is in, and his inability to immerse himself into it. Lee layers the scenes with different contrasts on a single image and creates multiple textures on the plain surface; he exaggerates, cuts, and edits certain subject matters and plays the game of humor. His secular group portraits remind us of Minjung art and its successors who painted propaganda murals and banners. His figures, however, contain less propaganda; they are giggly, mischievous, and flabby, but at the same time the figures suggest a determined solidity within. His banners focus on personal experiences and imageries, rather than collective ideas. ● The simple-minded figure in Lee's paintings is reminiscent of the genre paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, while the act of capturing the moment on the streets connects with the drawings of modern life, originating from Constantin Guys. Lee doesn't aim to become an idle flâneur; but strolls in order to inscribe "the boundless senses from the shore." The fluidity of artists today is the background for Lee's movements. Because of these conditions, the artist can rove the shores and comb for fragments of the world without stepping out of the orbit of his subjective life. The world is translated by the artist's breath. The figures throw a rebellious stare to the world calling for them, but choose to remain in the outskirts of the border than to destroy the world. The pi-mak*-like figures do not manifest any specific values or directions; they are based on failure and imperfection, full of distancing and self-deprecation. These faces, loose and slack, are not blocked out, but fully exposed to the world; these faces are penetrating into the air. Submerging into the world and conflicting with it at the same time, these faces vary in density and weight. Painted with the depth of skin, through a hole in the world, the scenes and figures intertwine like vines and re-weave the world. ● 4. For the exhibition BONUP: Art as Livelihood (2014) at DOOSAN Gallery Seoul, Lee stated that he "purposely challenge [himself] to make a large-scale work in order to overcome the conditions of reality." The fact that he chose banners as a path to cope with his precarious situations—worrying about livelihood and frequent relocation of his studio—denounces that the decision to change the medium is not only an artistic strategy, but also a self-stylization associated with the survival tactics of the young generation, or the so-called 880,000 won generation. Later on the faceless bodies, the anonymous and homogenous figures that were staring and holding small flames, and leaping into fire appeared to real faces with names and relations—his colleagues of about the same age. Perhaps the artist, who used to keep the distance from relationships, has come to admit his similarities with other members of the society and started to form a sense of solidarity. ● In this current exhibition My Dear, Lee switches back to gouache from water-based paint and gesso, and puts the weight back on his painted figures. The figures in the paintings are individuals with the contours of real names and lives. Indoor space suits these landscapes better than outdoors, as they start from figures with greater details. At the same time, Lee counterpoises shaded paintings of everyday scenes and flat pictures with bold colors. This composition blocks the audience from immersing into the situation and suggests that the narrative of the three dimensional world can always be exposed to and interrupted by the flat world, thus revealing the various textures of contemporary time and space. ● The concrete faces of others painted on pi-mak* predictably present a series of segments of the world where lives are intersected, and another form of the world by pi-mak*. The audiences' gaze, consciously reminding themselves to be careful not to run into or touch a banner, will walk beneath the figures that are painted larger than life size. This may be an attempt to bulk up the work by connecting the macroscopic world to a certain intimate community while keeping the sense of distance. ● This exhibition that starts with individual figures proceeds to weave their limbs together and intersect the body with the world through the figures' actions, then forms an urban landscape by expanding into communities and popular movements. It is yet to be determined if the figures' gaze towards the audience is an invitation to their community or a tense restraint against their participations; the staring gaze may be both a friendly gesture and a barrier. If it is the latter, the question cannot be avoided whether unconditional hospitality to the other is in fact a selective act limited to private friendship. The title of the exhibition, My Dear, also raises the question if 'My Dear' embraces unconditional welcoming to the outsiders beyond the dimensions of time and space; or it is limited to friends already within the community, who are trying to secure a place for themselves by constantly asking for recognition; or it only limits its ethics to the relationship which can only be expanded to its boundaries by giving out the place to someone. Despite the concern that the individual figures and their specific aspects are at risk of being bound to a single signification, more critiques will follow on how the light and shade of the world can break away from the inertia of relationships. ● The banner overwhelms the sight, but it is also a single layer of cloth hung in the air. Following logic, the paintings on cloth are a demonstration of one's precarious situations, but their excessive size reveals a certain childish reaction to the precariousness. However, the inevitable deprecation of the work—it being worn out and battered by repeatedly transporting, folding and unfolding—shows the reality where failure is a given. The artist sways about in the world but is constantly bound to the meaning of the structure; but then again he struggles with his way out, tears it apart, and reconfigures it. This gap-space between the public world and private subjectivity, the intersection point of the comic and the impetuousness collaborates itself into goods/objects or instigates conflict within the public space and reconstructs the landscape temporarily. ● In Lee's banners, the weight of the world evaporates into the secular dimensions. The distanced documentations of foreignness and conflict can seem transitive, but they are also active sets of shifting to try to comprehend the world. Fueled by precariousness, his works cling onto the object and track down the world; now they are accumulating in fragile figures, but forming the structures and reflecting the world back. Such an architecture of the banners, exposed of its looseness and adaptable to the terrain of all sorts and purposes, is in fact the other face of the community in which insecurely swaying strips of cloth repetitively make contact, entangle, feud, and part with one another. The world of pi-mak* is vulnerable, yet open towards the world. ■ Woong Nam
