HUMAN, HUMAN: SEOUL

 

Ko Yeonsoo (art critic)

 

Park’s work starts from his fear of surviving. The distant tragic disasters which made him deeply sad and intrigued at the same time, have become a crucial part of himself and a source of his work. But, as those disasters were unbearably complex, deep and serious to take it in as a personal grief of his own, Park has recently started to narrow his focus and dive into his own story. The actual set (film and music video set) where he worked at is now both his work space and art piece. The set is where he had made an actual living so it is the most raw and honest place for him and a space which he cannot add fake prettiness to it. It is difficult to imagine how the act of painting with a brush in the same space where he used to make a living can be translated to artistic work but for Park, the experience gave him a feeling of positive tension from the beginning and now it gives him comfort. Working in the highly controlled work space of his, drawing and painting areas the way they should be, then, editing the scene like putting together puzzle pieces and filling in the blanks with his ideas again is a balanced artistic process that gives him positive energy and motivation.

Instead of making each human sculpture with the highest precision,  Sun Lah creates a large group of sculptures difficult to count at a glance. Her wish is to one day sculpt the 7 billion population of the world. The amazing part of this is not just the sheer number of sculptures She will have to work on but also his unique way of seeing and observing people as all different individuals. Her sculptures are also divided in small clusters of people and these clusters all have their own story. They show us our own world and how we live, making stories and relationships with others. The artist also relies heavily on using wood and says that wood is such a soft and receptive material and couldn't be better for sculpting different objects. Despite the large number of sculptures, her work is never visually overwhelming because she uses 6 to 1 human to sculpture ratio. The sculptures mostly about 30 cm in height are easy to handle and arrange in groups but are not too small to be disregarded. The artist explains that these doll-sized human sculptures were used from the ancient times for rituals and games and, they can be used to represent the human form and makes people feel psychologically safe and at ease because they are represented in a size that can be dominated. Molding a wooden sculpture and its natural grain and streaks, the artist recently has mass-produced porcelain sculptures to depict endlessly created and reproduced human desires. The wooden sculpture that once had that human warmth to it was molded, reproduced in hundreds of porcelain sculptures and arranged in formation to show the social norms and customs we live by as well as human desires. Unlike her previous works which showed crowds and smaller groups of people each telling their own story, the beautiful female sculptures all having the same, standardized shape are looking at one direction with a cold expression.

The work of Sun Lah who always arranges her sculptures in groups to never allow any space for loneliness to seep in while focusing on individual human beings and the work of Park who has been telling his own concept of survival by translating his former work space into an artistic space were integrated in a single space.

First, Park builds structures on a set using wood which is one of the most easily torn-down materials. Park adds a timeworn look to the already worn-out structures. The set with Park’s wooden structures is reformed into a perfectly controlled set by Sun Lah . The set is given a life with people and stories Sun Lah Sun has put in. Park’s set and wooden structures which have to be completely torn down after playing their parts, become a crucial part that brings out the people and stories Sun Lah creates. In a way, it was always wood that also helped Lah to express various types of people through sculptures.

Park, the artist that depicts various workers making a living in their own way, looks into Lah’s workshop, the place where Lah makes a living. Park sees that Lah is intertwined among numerous human sculptures Lah has created and the way Lah moves and Lah changing into his working clothes. Park infuses the passing of time and Lah’s own survival into the set again. Meanwhile, among numerous human sculptures Lah created, there stands a lonely sculpture of Park’s thinking deeply about something.

Instead of real actors, the set is perfectly staged with the works of Park and Lah. Even though it has to be taken down and even though it is an illusion, the show is still put up. This show which has no plot but only a form is filled with Park’s saluting soldiers and Lah’s group of soldiers. A fake can be truly fake only when it looks so desperately and honestly real. This point that divides fake and real is where Park and Lah meet.

 

 

The views and perspectives these two artists have overlap on top of each other and create calm yet suspenseful, serious yet delightful stories in this exhibition. Also because the two artists have worked in the same space, their unique and different colors will bring deeper and colorful to the audience. We will be able to witness the depth and seriousness of Park who believes in human warmth as a way to surviving this busy and dreary world, the unbearable lightness of being through Lah’s depiction of fragile illusions and formalities endlessly reproduced through human desires and lastly, the fact that we are all humans after all.