In order to explore new trends in contemporary art, Artspace 3 presents an exhibition that offers a glimpse into the fresh and experimental world of young artists through recommendations from curators who combine expertise and on-site knowhow. The title of the first exhibition is “Illegible Map,” based on continuous research to paint a new, futuristic landscape of Korean contemporary art.
In the past, works strategically dealing with current events and social issues formed the mainstream. In today’s art, these large-scale themes have disappeared, and instead have been replaced by countless private narratives. Each artist portrays a society reflected in themself through their own subjective memories and daily lives, so it is not easily read as a trend or movement. At the same time, within the art form, it is difficult to give labels because all expressions from the past until now--including oil paintings, drawings, cartoons, illustrations, animations, and designs--appear with equal value and coexist on one screen. “Illegible,” as the title of this exhibition, has this double meaning.
The nine artists (Minsu Kim, Chansong Kim, Hansaem Kim, Hyeonsu Kim, Sooncheon No, Sabak, Chaehee Shin, Jieun Oh, and Byungkoo Jeon) all have their own unique storytelling that describes time flowing with different colors and forms inside. Within this space of time, special memories are revealed by chance.
Minsu Kim, Chansong Kim, Sabak, and Jieun Oh capture familiar materials and traces of everyday life that are accidentally brought together on the screen without perspective setting and highlight these daily traces as they are. Through this process, the artists secure the moment when their prosaic lives suddenly become unfamiliar and mystifying. These boundaries of “familiarity” and “unfamiliarity” lead viewers to experience new stories of imagination. Meanwhile, Chaehee Shin objectively visualizes memories without substance by themselves, such as personal anecdotes and psychological sentiments, by granting them forms and colors. By combining glamorous colors, ideas and abstractions, the screen symbolizes the pieces of both grim and happy memories. In the case of Hyunsu Kim and Byungkoo Jeon, the surrounding, ordinary scenery that might have been overlooked by people, or the scenery in memory, is reconstructed into a unique inner landscape that seems static through the process of expanding some of the space or combining its parts. Sooncheon No installs expressionless facial figures in the exhibition space using wires like a drawing medium, which humorously shows us living among other people in relationships in modern society. Hansaem Kim shows a fantasy world where things that are impossible in reality happen by rhythmically reconstructing characters in novels, fantasy stories, and games he likes on the screen.
In the works of these nine artists, we encounter a process of constant personalization beyond the dichotomous boundaries of realistic expression and abstract sensibility, of chance and fate, of replication and inspiration, and of drawing and sculpting. Just like dipping a Madeleine in black tea made the visions of memories associated with the taste appear one by one, the artists tried to express abstract impressions and memories beyond the traces of reality rather than focusing on visual reproduction. For this reason, it seems to be an illegible map that is not easily read; however, all artists point in one direction: looking at themselves as the mirror of society, focusing on their small daily stories, and expressing these stories freely and spontaneously regardless of form and trend. In these secret-diary-like works, the artists share consolation, confessions, wishes, and complicated introspective feelings through conversation with their inner-most selves. I hope this exhibition will be a place to meet various stories of ordinary people living in the "here" and "now".
Hyunkyung Kim (Independent curator)
