Shinan-gun(district) of Jeonnam Province is comprised of 72 inhabited islands, 953 uninhabited islands, in total 1025 islands. It has 2 towns(eup) and 12 townships(myeon). From the southernmost Gageodo to the northernmost Eouido, the distance spans almost 200 km, and its islands are scattered over a surface wider than 22 times the size of Seoul.
When I visited my hometown of Shinan islands in 2005 in a long while, everything I had known so well since my childhood looked unfamiliar as if I were looking at them for the first time. A familiar unfamiliarity or jamais vu evolving from deja vu, meant that there was a vast gap between my memory and the reality in front of me.
Searching for this gap and recording it developed as the theme of my work on Shinan which continued for almost 17 years. As an insider and outsider; since I am from this area, yet I have been away for long, I had been asking myself what is actually there between the changed Shinan and the still intact landscape, from such overlapping viewpoints. Furthermore, it was also my personal expression of love for and attachment to this place, especially for the beauty of the islands and the sea which were always considered as a remote isolated area.
After I had photographed the landscapes, a certain abstract nature could be found in the generally specific description. For example, the submerged rock shot that I took in Hongdo is a typical big-scale landscape photograph with extremely detailed description, but it clearly looked abstract. It is not because the composition method or color tone was simple, but due to something inherent in the photo. As Roland Barthes had mentioned, this is the noema of photography. As with glass window and landscape, good and evil, desire and its object, it is a matter of dual superposition, so it cannot be divided unless broken apart. That is, abstract nature combined with figurative detail could be the photographed object itself or the essence of photography.
As my working period was prolonged and there were too many photos, paintings based on photos, and drawings, I could not possibly show them in a single show. Therefore, I divided them into 2 parts: Part 1 is mostly of the landscapes of Shinan, including the life and death of marine life. Part 2 portrays life, about the village, people, and their work. Basically, these two parts cannot be separated, thus it is inevitable that most of my works fall into both categories. The mudflat, sand, and wind form the axis of Shinan-gun as well as the subtitle of this exhibition which would act as a general guide to this district.
Honggoo Kang
Press release courtesy ONE AND J. Gallery.
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