A Snowflake | KUKJE GALLERY

Exhibition Title: 스노우 플레이크 (A Snowflake)
Exhibition Dates: 2017. 5.25 - 7.2
Exhibition Space: Kukje Gallery K1
Exhibition Curator: 현시원(Seewon Hyun) 
Exhibition Artists: 김익현(GIM IKHYUN), 최윤(Choi Yun), 박정혜(Junghae Park), 이미래(Mire Lee)
Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday: 10am-6pm / Sunday, Holiday: 10am-5pm
Website: www.kukjegallery.com

Kukje Gallery is pleased to present A Snowflake, a group show of young contemporary Korean artists organized by guest curator Seewon Hyun, Co-Director of Audio Visual Pavilion. Each of the four artists participating in A Snowflake interprets the visible world in a different way. Hyun’s curatorial framework explores “how young contemporary artists see the world in 2017,” capturing their views on “what shape it is in.” The artist Junghae Park simultaneously sees deserts, tears, friends, and trees. Choi Yun’s work features lenticular images, exploring their photogenic aspects and engaging the difference between what is perceived through the eyes and through a camera. Mire Lee has created an uncanny environment that attempts to play around with the idea of what is “mine” and beyond. GIM IKHYUN critically engages with Korean social beliefs, deconstructing how common values were promoted in order to hypnotize Koreans into believing in a shared future. These past ideals, GIM proposes, now constitute a shared present for the Korean people. Each of the artists questions how art can capture and communicate the fleeting images they “see” using art as a kind of aesthetic proof to frame contemporary life.
 
The exhibition examines the unique formats of each artist’s work, specifically the way each conceives his or her artwork by integrating fragmented ideas into a final result. In his book What Shape is a Snowflake?, the British mathematician Ian Stewart analyzes the hexagonal pattern of snowflakes and their molecular structure—a phenomenon he compares to the growth principles seen in spider webs. Stewart’s  book builds on the famous treatise On the Six-Cornered Snowflake by the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler, written in 1611. Ian Stewart engages in the question, raised by Kepler, “Why is a snowflake falling from the sky always six-sided?” Stewart, after an intensive inquiry, concludes that the secret of a snowflake’s form is simply that, “a snowflake is just snowflake-shaped.”

In this exhibition, the analogy of the snowflake allows for a framing of things that start off with a preconceived structure but become unrecognizable. The title of the exhibition actually originated with a far simpler concept, a “snowman,” an object easily perceived and recognized by all people, from children to the elderly all around the globe. In contrast to a snowman that symbolizes something that is cute, adorable, and wintery, i.e., an icon that is recognizable “information,” a snowflake is a fragmentary and intangible object, whose usage is hard to identify. A snowflake is also a metaphor for human intuition and as such presents the tension between subjective and objective perception. This framing segues into the premise that, in order to observe an object, we need to establish our own empirical time and experience rather than compare it with others; in this way, the different ways of seeing as employed by each artist are not immediately visible at quick glance but require a steady observation.

A Snowflake includes both old and new works by the four artists. GIM IKHYUN documents the way today’s cameras capture and collect evidence, so that one can learn what is not captured by them as well. Choi Yun’s work explores how the Korean state has systematically collected images since the 2010s, presenting her work Liquid Crystal Bubble Future Display to document these online and offline worlds. A new body of paintings by Junghae Park explores how the infinite imagery found online strips meaning from shared symbols, thereby creating a kind of desert of the real. Her work suggests that our eyes can revitalize these stripped vocabularies through a reframing process. The sculptures of Mire Lee frame the question of subjectivity and, in this exhibition, Lee investigates how multiple pieces of sculpture can exist independently from one other within the same time frame.


국제갤러리는 시청각 공동 디렉터인 큐레이터 현시원이 기획한 젊은 미술가들의 그룹전 «A Snowflake»를 선보인다. «A Snowflake»전에 참여하는 네 명의 작가들은 모두 각자의 방식으로 눈에 보이는 세계를 다룬다. 전시는 2017년을 사는 젊은 작가들이 ‘세계를 어떻게 보고 있는가’, ‘그것은 어떤 모양인가’를 여러 각도로 탐구한다. «A Snowflake»에서 박정혜는 사막과 눈물과 친구와 나무를 동시에 본다. 최윤은 랜티큘러(입체그림) 이미지와 포토제닉의 양태를 오늘의 각성제로 다룬다. 이미래는 나의 것과 외부의 것들이 이루는 에너지를 쥐락펴락하고자 하는 이상한 공기를 만든다. 김익현은 한국 사회에서 특정한 집단이 보인다고 믿었던 것, 나타나서 보여질 것이라고 최면했던 것들을 현재를 구성하는 하나의 소실점으로 본다. 네 명의 작가들은 어떻게 '여기' 남겨진 증거들을 ‘본다’, 혹은 ‘보았다’라고 말할 수 있는가를 묻는다.

전시는 작업의 형태에 관해 궁금해 한다. 구체적으로 각자의 수수께끼가 작업의 리얼리티를 획득하는 방식과 파편들이 어떻게 최종 결과물에 이르게 되는지를 살펴본다. 영국의 과학자 이언 스튜어트는 저서 『눈송이는 어떤 모양일까』에서 눈송이의 육각형 형태와 수평적 모뉴멘트처럼 뻗어나가는 거미줄식 입자 구조를 분석했다. 책은 1611년 천문학자 케플러가 쓴 『꼭지점이 여섯 개인 눈송이에 관하여(On the Six-Cornered Snowflake)』의 뒤를 잇는다. 이언 스튜어트는 수학자이자 신비주의자였던 케플러가 제기한 ‘흩날리는 눈송이의 꼭지점은 왜 하필 항상 6개일까’라는 수수께끼를 뒤따라간다. 눈송이 구조의 실체를 파헤치려는 20세기의 과학자가 마지막으로 던지는 한 마디는 이렇다. “눈송이는 그래서 눈송이 모양이다.”

이번 전시에서 눈송이(a snowflake)는 어떤 모양인지 알 수 없는, 직관적 인식이 힘든 영역으로까지 확장한다. 전시명은 어린아이부터 노인, 전세계 모든 이들이 알아보고 인지하는 대상인 ‘눈사람’과 대립되는 개념에서 출발했다. 여기서 눈사람이 귀여움과 사랑스러움, 눈이 오는 계절의 상징이자 의인화된 사물의 아이콘인 알아보기 쉬운 ‘정보’로 사용되는 데 반해 눈송이는 어디에 어떻게 사용해야 하는지 알 수 없는 파편이자 형체를 잡아내기 어려운 성분, 개인의 직관으로 은유된다. 본 전시는 눈앞에 무언가를 데려다 놓고 보는 일이 실상 다른 대상과의 비교·대립 보다는 실증적이고 경험적 시간을 요한다는 귀착점에 다다른다. 작가마다 개별적으로 붙잡고 있는 ‘보는 방식’에 대한 문제는 한 눈에 대상을 재빨리 훑어보려는 눈썰미로는 잡히지 않는다.  

«A Snowflake»는 김익현, 최윤, 박정혜, 이미래의 구작과 신작을 전시한다. 김익현은 구체적 실증의 예시들이 세상의 무엇을 보여주고 안 보여주는가를 지금의 카메라가 채집하는 방식으로 기억한다. 2010년대 대한민국이 끝없이 수거하는 이미지들과 온·오프라인 세계의 부속들을 산재료로 제시해온 최윤은 이번 전시에서 <액정 기포 미래 진열>을 만든다. 박정혜의 신작은 '현실을 사막화하는 온라인의 수많은 존재들을 인간의 눈이 과연 어떻게 생동감 있게 이겨낼 수 있을 것인가'라는 원초적인 호기심을 자아낸다. 이미래에게 조각을 한다는 것은 ‘나의’ 문제를 어떻게 해결할 것인가 하는 문제와 맞닿아있다. 작가는 이번 전시에서 여러 개의 다른 조각들이 각자 같은 순간에 개별적으로 존재하는 형태를 연구한다.