Rubbing of an Inscription Border
Jo Hyun Shin | Graduate School of Techno Design, Kookmin University
The solo exhibition of Jeong Heewoo entitled Border (境) is about a boundary. Since a boundary does not fall into either side, it is an intriguing place. For a boundary is a juncture at which differing things meet, however, compromises and rejections are expected to coexist as well. Moreover, if that Border is not a place one can freely travel, will wind there be stagnant as opposed to flowing? The artist went out to this land, the border of North and South Korea and came back with the sign there.
Kaesong Industrial Complex, which was built back in 2000 and starting operating in 2005, was shut down in 2016. In 2013, when the news came out that Kaesong complex would be closed, the view of the Inter-Korean Transit Office, which leads to Kaesong complex, was exposed. According to the artist, she was watching that scene on TV and found the sign Kaesong very peculiar in a sense that the letter was there as if the place was still reachable despite the fact that it was not. After that, she had the urge to visit there and touch the sign. It was the feeling and heart that initiated this work.
Kaesong is a sign written on the ground in the border area. Over the sign marked right next to the sign Seoul are traces made by heavy trucks traveling between North and South Korea. The exhibition Border is a record of this time. However, this exhibition does not reproduce that time and event in the form of photography, painting, or narration. The large rubbing made by the artist tapping an inked cotton swab rubbed off the inscription on which things that cannot be represented by photography or painting convene. Have a close look at each fine crevice there, therein, an epic tales of tire marks made by vehicles coming and going from to Kaesong and Seoul in 10 years in wind and rain, snow and sunlight are permeated. And right at this moment, the aspirations of openly going beyond the boundary are seeping into the sign, into the place—as if delight and pain, as well as hopes for life, leave traces in our faces.
Jeong calls herself a “recorder of a city.” The artist presents changes of Gangnam area from her idiosyncratic view by recording old signs, apartment’s fences, and walls in a rubbing. Her objects of rubbing are old and they are not merely a record of information that deliver achievement of time. Her rubbing work is mostly black and white, plain and serene corresponding to one another. They are summoned here by the act of the artist and ask, “Come see me. I have accumulated these traces all the while. How was your trails of time?”
Jeong’s work titled The Rubbing of a Doha Army Base Bathhouse is a rubbing of unfeeling square tiles. When standing in front of it, a scene of a bathhouse from the old days conjures up. One’s personal memory of a public bath, of following mom as a child—now the gone place—is recalled in a peculiar way. By means of not revealing the actual bathroom view, that scene is empty. Yet, because of the empty space, the audiences project their own memory onto the work through the black and white marks of tiles. A carved-in mark on pavements is a whiff of passerby’s footsteps. Footsteps of a passerby who walked down that street one day, or they might well be the viewer’s own. Hence, the artworks Jeong has made with rubbing are perhaps the richest representation of site specificity that convey narratives brought in by each audience.
Another captivating attribute of Jeong’s work lies in the properties and color of the work. These pieces transferred onto Hanji (mulberry paper) are natural to our soft and warm body. Lavish, slick, and glittering things are beautiful, because they enliven our eyes. However, the value of the simplicity of black and white is permanent, because breath-holding silence can as much deepen us as rising vitality. A big city consists of reflective glass and mirrors that reflect our soft body, and steel. Transferring this cold city onto Hanji where paints are smudging; borders are vague, and things are mingled with one another, is characteristic of her work.
The place where the work of Jeong Heewoo cultivates artistic value originates from a place thereby rudimentary, eternal black and white offers warm properties and simultaneously instigates memory and interpretation of individuals. In that way, her rubbing works are called up here through the softly smearing paper without adding any color or form to it. And we step into memory through the artist’s work. At this point, the artist, the object of representation, and the viewers are regenerated together. Hence, we might well be able to experience what the Roman poet Marcus V. Martialis said, “Living life that remembers the past is to live another life.”
The two characters anyone can read is Kaesung. It is the enraging place that hurt the business community; the leverage used by politicians to realize their political interests, and the heavily loaded longing place that is gradually fading away from the separated families. And yet how much of site specificity clung to this place, other than those stated above, could this one word Kaesung invoke? All these sentiments are anchored in the premise of reality—that is, that land is no longer accessible.
Pleasant wind that may have breezed all the while the artist was working still might well be blowing over the sign somewhere the Inter-Korean Transit Office, the rubbings that transplanted the narrative into this exhibition in Hongji-dong is on its way to creating multifold narratives.
Jo Hyun Shin | Graduate School of Techno Design, Kookmin University
The solo exhibition of Jeong Heewoo entitled Border (境) is about a boundary. Since a boundary does not fall into either side, it is an intriguing place. For a boundary is a juncture at which differing things meet, however, compromises and rejections are expected to coexist as well. Moreover, if that Border is not a place one can freely travel, will wind there be stagnant as opposed to flowing? The artist went out to this land, the border of North and South Korea and came back with the sign there.
Kaesong Industrial Complex, which was built back in 2000 and starting operating in 2005, was shut down in 2016. In 2013, when the news came out that Kaesong complex would be closed, the view of the Inter-Korean Transit Office, which leads to Kaesong complex, was exposed. According to the artist, she was watching that scene on TV and found the sign Kaesong very peculiar in a sense that the letter was there as if the place was still reachable despite the fact that it was not. After that, she had the urge to visit there and touch the sign. It was the feeling and heart that initiated this work.
Kaesong is a sign written on the ground in the border area. Over the sign marked right next to the sign Seoul are traces made by heavy trucks traveling between North and South Korea. The exhibition Border is a record of this time. However, this exhibition does not reproduce that time and event in the form of photography, painting, or narration. The large rubbing made by the artist tapping an inked cotton swab rubbed off the inscription on which things that cannot be represented by photography or painting convene. Have a close look at each fine crevice there, therein, an epic tales of tire marks made by vehicles coming and going from to Kaesong and Seoul in 10 years in wind and rain, snow and sunlight are permeated. And right at this moment, the aspirations of openly going beyond the boundary are seeping into the sign, into the place—as if delight and pain, as well as hopes for life, leave traces in our faces.
Jeong calls herself a “recorder of a city.” The artist presents changes of Gangnam area from her idiosyncratic view by recording old signs, apartment’s fences, and walls in a rubbing. Her objects of rubbing are old and they are not merely a record of information that deliver achievement of time. Her rubbing work is mostly black and white, plain and serene corresponding to one another. They are summoned here by the act of the artist and ask, “Come see me. I have accumulated these traces all the while. How was your trails of time?”
Jeong’s work titled The Rubbing of a Doha Army Base Bathhouse is a rubbing of unfeeling square tiles. When standing in front of it, a scene of a bathhouse from the old days conjures up. One’s personal memory of a public bath, of following mom as a child—now the gone place—is recalled in a peculiar way. By means of not revealing the actual bathroom view, that scene is empty. Yet, because of the empty space, the audiences project their own memory onto the work through the black and white marks of tiles. A carved-in mark on pavements is a whiff of passerby’s footsteps. Footsteps of a passerby who walked down that street one day, or they might well be the viewer’s own. Hence, the artworks Jeong has made with rubbing are perhaps the richest representation of site specificity that convey narratives brought in by each audience.
Another captivating attribute of Jeong’s work lies in the properties and color of the work. These pieces transferred onto Hanji (mulberry paper) are natural to our soft and warm body. Lavish, slick, and glittering things are beautiful, because they enliven our eyes. However, the value of the simplicity of black and white is permanent, because breath-holding silence can as much deepen us as rising vitality. A big city consists of reflective glass and mirrors that reflect our soft body, and steel. Transferring this cold city onto Hanji where paints are smudging; borders are vague, and things are mingled with one another, is characteristic of her work.
The place where the work of Jeong Heewoo cultivates artistic value originates from a place thereby rudimentary, eternal black and white offers warm properties and simultaneously instigates memory and interpretation of individuals. In that way, her rubbing works are called up here through the softly smearing paper without adding any color or form to it. And we step into memory through the artist’s work. At this point, the artist, the object of representation, and the viewers are regenerated together. Hence, we might well be able to experience what the Roman poet Marcus V. Martialis said, “Living life that remembers the past is to live another life.”
The two characters anyone can read is Kaesung. It is the enraging place that hurt the business community; the leverage used by politicians to realize their political interests, and the heavily loaded longing place that is gradually fading away from the separated families. And yet how much of site specificity clung to this place, other than those stated above, could this one word Kaesung invoke? All these sentiments are anchored in the premise of reality—that is, that land is no longer accessible.
Pleasant wind that may have breezed all the while the artist was working still might well be blowing over the sign somewhere the Inter-Korean Transit Office, the rubbings that transplanted the narrative into this exhibition in Hongji-dong is on its way to creating multifold narratives.
