artist interview/performance video
Gallery Chosun will host the solo exhibition of Yohan Hàn from November 29 to December 19, 2019. Yohan conducts various formal experiments with the awareness of the relationship between performance and plastic works, and the relationship between media and communication.
In this exhibition, Yohan focus to the situation and meaning that arise between the performance and its traces. The exhibition is realized on the basis of a performance that will take place twice during the exhibition period, but the performance itself is not revealed in any form in the exhibition space. The clothing worn by the performers is on display, a series of drum sculptures produced by the artist is used for the performance, and a chat room on the smartphone records the conversations between the performers and the audience. If the audience are active or lucky, they will be able to watch the performance directly and participate in these conversations. The exhibition has its own meaning without the presence of the performance. The exhibition leads to a reflection on the relationship between the absent performance and the objects installed in the space. It raises fundamental questions about the basic structure of a performance.
The title of the exhibition, indicates the process by which "movement", which is the basic unit of the performance, changes in various media, and the movement itself is created on the basis of such variation. Today's gestures, which have fragmented conversations on social networks or the internet as a condition of basic communication, are increasingly fragmented and engrave their traces in various materials. The exhibition simultaneously explores the possibility and impossibility of a dialogue through the body under these conditions.
Preface by Solji KIM
1. Depth and skin Gallery Chosun, where Yohan Hàn's solo exhibition is held, is located in the basement. We're going deep underground. But where does it deepen?
When we say that the deeper we go from the surface to the interior, the "surface" is always deeper, so it can be the deepest. Yohan looked at the underground space of the gallery and recalled the tunnel of Eupalinos. In fact, it is a Greek tunnel drilled by the engineer Eupalinos in the 6th century BC, but here means from the French literary Paul Valéry. Paul Valéry, who borrowed the dialogue of Platon, wrote a novel in the form of a dialogue between the dead (Phaedrus and Socrates) and tried to convey the 'meaning' of the work through a process of communication through these characters. 'Profound', 'Conversation', here Yohan also recalls next sentence of Paul Valéry. "The deepest part of a human is his skin (Ce qu'il y a de plus profond de l'homme, c'est la peau)". Depth is the inside and the skin is not just an outer surface. This means that human communicates and knows the world through the skin. In the exhibition , man and objects face each other in depth.
2. Vibrations (2019) is a work using animal skin and wood. Yohan softened sheep and cow skins and fixed them by placing several nails in an irregular ball shape. In this series, named 'gibbous' with 'long', which means less complete than the full moon, more complete than the half moon, the artist shows different types of drums made with the artisanal technique. However, unlike the traditional drum in general, has only one side. Yohan's previous work <108th (ghost color)> (2012 ~ 2015) comes to mind. It is a snow back sculpture (hereafter reproduced with synthetic resin) on the border of Korea. Like the back of a (dead)man crouching in the snow, the backside of the drum is fixed to the white wall.
Artist not only shows these pieces, but also plays the surface of the drum with production tools (acupressure, animal bones, jade, etc.). The vibrations that come from the skin of the dead animals fill the space of the gallery. The wavelength of the recorded drum sound propagates through the air and causes the eardrum to vibrate.
In the old days the sound of drums signalled war. It was a means of communication. Like a hand tap on a drum, the process of tapping the surface and spreading the signal to reach the other person is more natural in everyday life. Communication begins when the finger taps the hard glass surface of a smartphone. Rather than using the exhibition space only to show the works, Yohan directs the space as a living stage. He designed a performance using the characteristics of the gallery space that reminded him of the Eupalinos tunnel. Five scenes, in key words such as fall, balance, death, repetition and cycle, with their respective pauses, take place in the exhibition space. In the first scene, the performers fall slowly from the gallery's entrance door and slowly communicate with their hands. Everyone has a smartphone on their hands and tries to communicate with each other via SMS. Visible movements and invisible electronic signals constantly move and connect to each other. Communication between several people: artist, performer, and audience takes place simultaneously.
3. Beyond the skin The artist's thought is linked to the performer's movement. Movement to language, language to movement. The audience also sends text messages to the chat room according to the theme of the scene. A bodily text dialogue takes place on the screen. Communication takes place inside and outside the skin. It absorbs communication information from outside the skin and radiates it inside. Conversely, I send it through the skin from my depth. Everyone has no choice but to communicate arbitrarily and subjectively, but nevertheless, the words to 'you' stir the heart to 'me'. Some taps shake and get stuck in the brain at 'me'. Although everyone is a subjective individual, we have something in common, and we divide it from time to time and feel it in common. If we have the power to knock on each other's door and that knocking can be affected, we can keep in touch with the mistakes that often occur. When we come out of this tunnel, we can reflect on how changes in our 'method of communication' and the selection of 'communication targets' affect our lives.
Press release courtesy Gallery Chosun.
BF1, 2F
64, Buckchon-ro 5-gil
Jongno-gu
Seoul, 03053
South Korea
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