Interview (2012.4.10)
Looking through your work you have done, they have one thing in common that cameras are installed in the space structure.
Being interested in space, at the early days, I've been working with the light. When I was studying in Germany, I was interested in the light coming into the window. The light was moving in the room and it went out through the wall. For my initial work, I have taken photos of them and drawn them in a space. I also changed the form of the light or draged it into a space using mirror. I tried to make the light coming through the window as an architectural structure that people are actually able to get inside. The light itself became a architectural space and people could open the door walked into the area of the light. It could be felt as psychological, religional healing or the passage to another world. Thinking of the spiritual feeling that the movement of space and the light gives from my recent work, I have found that I have had a desire of making different area of light from the reality. Let me tell you the starting point of using camera in my work. I bought a building model in a flea market, I put a light in that model. While I was trying to make the light move, I just felt like to see the light from inside of the model building. So I put the camera in it. The interior of the small model which is seen through the camera looked like a real space. Besides, the light coming through the window made immersing unique sense of space being reflected by the plastic texture of ceiling and floor. I haven't developed this work for a year because I felt this simple form of the model with the camera is completed. All the other thing I tried further seemed like too much. From a lot of drawings and trials, finally, I made which was modeled after my own living room I've lived and I installed camera inside. The vision of the camera itself became quite important since the camera takes the picture of the visitors and the gallery through the big window of this room. Then the circulating structure of vision has been created ; the camera watches audience, the audience watches the vision of the camera through the monitor next to it. After then, my works that camera and building model are combined such as Living room , Dormitory with 5 rooms, Gymnasium work had been in progress steadily even after I got back to Korea.
I would like to hear more specific about the context of the way your work has been changed – from the light itself structuralized to the light coming into the structure.
My early works were observing the sunlight coming into the real architectural space, and structuralizing the changing light. However I think the way of my work has been changed to the way of the light coming into the structure. As you mentioned, I started using architectural model and filled it with light or moved the light in it. As a matter of fact, the work observing the sunlight has not been going on. Maybe, I guess I got to have great interest in the frame that the light moves – the architectural structure. From then, I started considering about how the architectural structure works in my work, and it is still ongoing. Dormitory separated into several rooms, huge, empty spaces such as gymnagium, transparent buildings with glass wall were where I visited often or my friends' houses. The emotions I felt in those places were reflected in the form of my work. At some point, I think it is about a kind of experience; structuralizing the light or the architectural structure. While there would be direct or indirect experiences, how do you recognize about the 'experience' in terms of your work.? I think 'experience' is the key word to explain how the two direction - of camera and the light - goes. My thought of light is started from the experiences when I was preparing a portfolio to enter university in Germany. The light in Germany is very strong. The sunlight suddenly came into my small room and moved. Sometimes I felt it warm but sometimes terrifying. I felt like the strong, brilliant light come and go licking the space with tongue. That movement was quite impressive to me. Before I drew the light, I have drawn crocodiles. After I graduated the university in Korea, I visited the crocodile park in India. Plenty of crocodiles was not moving at all until the keeper feeds, they suddenly moved strongly. They moved really intensely all at once. I'd been drawing crocodiles a lot even I was in germany. Gradually the light was treated like the crocodile by me. The movemnet works strongly as your experience. Yes, it does. Not only the feeling that the movement of things touches me, but I, myself also feel the vilsual change while I am moving in the space...
Comparing this exhibition to the former exhibition, the former one shows structures, inside and outside, the subject and the object. But this time you seem to tell more about the inner structure of buildings and the healing. Does your personal experience of living in Gwangju - the city you have lived when you were a child?
The work dealing with the inside and the outside of building, the subject and the object of vision, using camera and architectural model has been continued for long time. I focused on the personal aspect since series 2 years ago. I got to have interest in the story of city and town when I had a solo show in Japan. The area around the gallery was redeveloped and the houses had been torn down one by one. Actually one was torn down while the show was going on. I started making models of the buildings from the simple idea ; to collect the collapsing buildings. Installing cameras inside and outside of those collected buildings and putting rotating light, I reminded about my childhood experiences in Gwangju; the feelings of city I experienced when I was 12years old- the era of 5.18 Gwangju Democratic Uprising, the experience of hiding. the city itself not functioning normally and people hiding , whispering everywhere. I'll say it was kind of silence full of anxiety. Thinking of it again, I think my works are from myself; the way I face with outside. My character which is very careful and shy of strangers makes me feel isolated sometimes, meanwhile it works as great curiosity. As I am getting on in years, my shyness has become weak, yet the instability of emotion from the relationship with others and the strange or familiar situation is metaphorized with the architectural structure and the motion of light.
Compare to the former works, seem a bit different: it has a synopsis such as invisible smoke or the broken form of destroyed building.
I feel like a building, a space as a being of human. If I put a camera in it, I feel it as a vision of a being, and the light in it gives more spiritual sense. I also feel like my body as a shell I am inside. Sometimes I imagine I am watching what's happening outside through my eyes as window. Hence, I thought that it is not strange to make the shell covering my existence into a building. That villa had been leaved half demolished for 3 months in a Newly-developed Residential Area near to my house. I'd taken photos whenever I passed it by, naturally made it into a model. Because I wanted to try to make body and the model close, I started creating this chunk of smoke coming from the model. I saw one of an audience tried to lean on or get inside the building model when I made it with human-like size; this became a motive of this work. Seeing that extreme communication, I wondered how would be if the audiences really tear down the model: the destroyed buildiing and the body of an audience becomes one.
You mentioned the building and the body, I supposed it is related the work .
Yes. is from that context. The smoke chunk of the villa is the story that body and the buildings being combined together. And the final process is inserted into the building like a chunk of smoke. Whereas two floating buildings crash each other in , in this work, they are inserted not being broken. It is about a dramatic conjoining of two buildings as metaphor of two beings.
Does it have something related to healing?
I become very careful when I talk about healing, but I am certain that you can think of the aspect of healing in terms of the wound and shock which are from the relationship. In series, I asked people to talk about their own wound and to react to it. Most of people seemed to remind their hurt being absorbed into their inner side. They looked like repeating simple actions in appearance, such as hiding in their hair or clothe, touching their finger or biting their lips slightly. I felt the isolation is expanded watching the individual who is sunk in their inner problem being shown inside the model opened with transparent wall. But it is a bit complicated to interpret it as healing because the several emotions continue in them. I think the work is more about the tension between me and others, inside and outside.
Please explain one of your work, <10 houses> which you combined flat layers.
I think this is very important piece. This is a kind of the seed of my work. It includes a lot of things inside even though it looks simple. I've been doing this kind of drawing work for long time. There are some works such as drawings which are layered with moving perspectives or 3 dimensional steel frame layer works. The animation of these layer works - the silhouettes of building appear,disappear and are overlapped - is similar to my feeling when I experience buildings.
Could you tell me how you would like to proceed your work?
Compare to the earlier works, I had made a full structure in a piece before- two visions around the camera from outside and inside, but I started not combining all the elements into one piece in this exhibition so that each pieces can be combined organically in a gallery. I think it made the direction of my work different a little bit. For instance, which is composed with rotating light and camera, real time projection is without the familiar structural frame I used to use; The floating light hits the wall of real space - the gallery, not the building model. In 3D-animation work, I made the image of virtual space without physical structure. The light image of space read by camera were separated; as a real light in a real space in , as a light as virtual image on monitor in animation work. My 3-dimentional work will be changed from reproducing architectural model as image to more simple, repetitive skulpting. This would be the connecting point to the earliest work. Moreover, I would like to make some space work or video projection work to bigger size so that audiences can actually get inside of it or climb on it.
Press release courtesy Gallery Chosun.
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