Sunday in Seongsu-dong
By Park Young-taik, Kyonggi University Professor & Art Critic
The plaza, a space where unspecified individuals throng, steal glances at one another, and witness diverse spectacles, came into being during the Renaissance period. Piazza Venezia is a typical example. As showy, magnificent buildings, innumerable visual images, sculptures and fashion filled such places, a so-called “seeing culture” came to be established. Art, architecture, and fashion are indeed the products of plazas. In this sense, Western modern times is in line with the evolvement of public space or urban culture. Life spaces for the majority of people moved from natural spaces to cities as they went through the Quattrocento (15th century) and the Industrial Revolution after the Middle Ages. Today our lives are thoroughly defined within urban spaces. Walter Benjamin clarified his prophetic perception toward this in his Arcades Project. Urban spaces are currently full of a wide array of spectacles. In this sense, a city is a rich enormous repository of visual images. Everyone who lives there can communicate with one another through symbols deriving from things, commodities, and images in the city, desiring and accepting them with diverse perceptions. All the same, living in a city cannot be in disagreement with the matter of how to interpret images there. Jeong Hee-woo’s work concern such a context.
One Sunday Jeong roamed around the streets of Seongsu-dong, Seoul like novelist Gubo did in a novel. To speak in the way of Charles Baudelaire, she is a flaneur (the urban explorer). She observed an area with newly opened stores mixed with shabby buildings, worn out signs, and closed shutters redolent of an industrial area that was once prosperous but currently remains declined. At that moment, wooden signs seldom found nowadays came into her line of vision. They are historical medium that serve as a reminder of a time when Seongsu-dong was flourishing. They are also interesting visual images and signifiers that have an effect similar to labels.
The artist made rubbings of the wooden signs and applied colors to them. A rubbing is the most elemental means by which one can reproduce images. It is done by attaching a piece of paper to the surface of something. It also functions as a two-dimensional work that unmasks the destiny of painting that exists as only skin. As such, the artist made rubbings of appealing (?) signs she found around Seongsu-dong and depicted the façade of a shop at almost to its actual size. She also drew signs and buildings at an oblique optical angle and made dried rubbings of machines and products from Saelim factory. A strange optical illusion arises the moment they are put on the walls of a venue. We become plagued by visual hallucination we are waking around Seongsu-dong or in a certain kind of factory.
This work reflects archeological interest (so-called modernological interest) in that it discovers readymade images molding an already existing city and imparts a feeling of a strange aesthetic sense and nostalgia for time and past traces of history and people. In this way, a city is embellished with innumerable symbols and labels that are also very important visual images and part of the fine arts. We tend to consider art trapped in or limited by an exhibit space.
That being said, we come to realize how visual images or art can be enriched and broadened by the signs or such intriguing symbols (labels) that Jeong captures. Both signs and machines are visual images that lead viewers to think about things. In addition, they make us realize such symbols and labels assume a significant role in forging human life, culture and history.
By Park Young-taik, Kyonggi University Professor & Art Critic
The plaza, a space where unspecified individuals throng, steal glances at one another, and witness diverse spectacles, came into being during the Renaissance period. Piazza Venezia is a typical example. As showy, magnificent buildings, innumerable visual images, sculptures and fashion filled such places, a so-called “seeing culture” came to be established. Art, architecture, and fashion are indeed the products of plazas. In this sense, Western modern times is in line with the evolvement of public space or urban culture. Life spaces for the majority of people moved from natural spaces to cities as they went through the Quattrocento (15th century) and the Industrial Revolution after the Middle Ages. Today our lives are thoroughly defined within urban spaces. Walter Benjamin clarified his prophetic perception toward this in his Arcades Project. Urban spaces are currently full of a wide array of spectacles. In this sense, a city is a rich enormous repository of visual images. Everyone who lives there can communicate with one another through symbols deriving from things, commodities, and images in the city, desiring and accepting them with diverse perceptions. All the same, living in a city cannot be in disagreement with the matter of how to interpret images there. Jeong Hee-woo’s work concern such a context.
One Sunday Jeong roamed around the streets of Seongsu-dong, Seoul like novelist Gubo did in a novel. To speak in the way of Charles Baudelaire, she is a flaneur (the urban explorer). She observed an area with newly opened stores mixed with shabby buildings, worn out signs, and closed shutters redolent of an industrial area that was once prosperous but currently remains declined. At that moment, wooden signs seldom found nowadays came into her line of vision. They are historical medium that serve as a reminder of a time when Seongsu-dong was flourishing. They are also interesting visual images and signifiers that have an effect similar to labels.
The artist made rubbings of the wooden signs and applied colors to them. A rubbing is the most elemental means by which one can reproduce images. It is done by attaching a piece of paper to the surface of something. It also functions as a two-dimensional work that unmasks the destiny of painting that exists as only skin. As such, the artist made rubbings of appealing (?) signs she found around Seongsu-dong and depicted the façade of a shop at almost to its actual size. She also drew signs and buildings at an oblique optical angle and made dried rubbings of machines and products from Saelim factory. A strange optical illusion arises the moment they are put on the walls of a venue. We become plagued by visual hallucination we are waking around Seongsu-dong or in a certain kind of factory.
This work reflects archeological interest (so-called modernological interest) in that it discovers readymade images molding an already existing city and imparts a feeling of a strange aesthetic sense and nostalgia for time and past traces of history and people. In this way, a city is embellished with innumerable symbols and labels that are also very important visual images and part of the fine arts. We tend to consider art trapped in or limited by an exhibit space.
That being said, we come to realize how visual images or art can be enriched and broadened by the signs or such intriguing symbols (labels) that Jeong captures. Both signs and machines are visual images that lead viewers to think about things. In addition, they make us realize such symbols and labels assume a significant role in forging human life, culture and history.
