Exhibition Information

Amebas in the bamboo forest
Exhibition View

Amebas in the bamboo forest
Exhibition View

Amebas in the bamboo forest Exhibition View

Amebas in the bamboo forest
Exhibition View

			When standing in front of an unexpected situation that cannot be controlled, rituals can go from introspection to typing. When you feel negative emotions such as lethargy, fear, or anxiety over a particular event or phenomenon, the arrow of consciousness towards someone other than yourself becomes more pointed and the arrow's trajectory becomes clearer.

In "Samguk Yusa," a bokdujang who knew the secret of King Gyeongmun's ear growing up is Yeiseolhwa, who went to a bamboo field and shouted, "Your ears are donkey's ears." Angered by the fact that his flattery was ringing in the fields, King Gyeongmun cut down all the bamboo trees and planted the acid oil. Just like King Gyeongmun's secret, which had been leaking from the newly planted trees, sometimes events and situations that irritate us from the outside are so deeply rooted that they are revealed throughout the everyday world. The symbolism of bamboo forests has resurfaced in various online communities in Korea today. Bamboo forest accounts of different groups of people online are mainly subjected to internal accusations or revelations of social phenomena.

The exhibition starts with the recent commonly thought landscape of visual arts exhibitions - where immediate causes are overlaid and covered in works, and sometimes blazed with images and text after igniting in the exhibition hall - reflecting the function of the bamboo forest. In the bamboo forest, where people keep secrets and scatter them while exhaling soft phytoncide, stories of people who are undergoing changes or have already transformed by external stimuli are scattered. Along with this, the summoned amoebaran refers to four writers who have been keenly aware of their transformations by the state or culture.

Participating writers Kang Sang-woo, Noh Hyun-tak, Shin Jung-kyun and Lee Young-joo continue to observe the emotions, conditions and even identity of a person undergoing an irresistible transformation from a series of theme consciousness. They reveal certain events or phenomena that have caused their detection system to plummet through the cracks in the bamboo trees. Their reactions to stimuli vary, but in common, they take a way of objectifying themselves. Each character in every corner of the exhibition hall is sometimes parasitic on typewriters, like a single-celled amoeba, and sometimes survives through events, accidents and phenomena in various forms, such as predating other beings or transforming or dividing shapes.

After spending time on the ground and underground floors of the exhibition space, as you wander through the grass, you experience the varying intensity and nature of each of the four writers' reactions. The speed at which the response is implemented as a visual object, and the density between the stimulus and the response, are also shown in different ways. After a month of exhibition period, this delicate and delicate set of processes quietly ignites in their respective locations, waiting for viewers or promising another project.

Kang consciously reveals the memories of childhood that are embedded deep in his unconscious mind and the symbolic building elements surrounding them in his work. He considers it his most "comfortable" moment when he comes into contact with toys he played with as a child or images in the media he encountered at that time. In other words, Kang Sang-woo faces the fact that his inner element is tightly linked to the part where a particular object creates aesthetic pleasure for him. In his world of work, a black-and-white animated snack commercial is reproduced in colorful pieces ([Sonjokong, ]Jaya]), and the name of a stationery store that has taken his heart out in his childhood is borrowed from the title of his work (Mongshil Tong). As soon as materials that help access with fantasy-like childhood memories become self-aware of the deep influence of writer Kang Sang-woo's sculptural thinking system, the author faithfully replaces them as works of the real world.

The color scheme and screen composition of Kang Sang-woo's drawing, which has been produced more than 1,000 points so far, are not evenly matched. Various productions in the drawing help him appreciate the complex emotions of childhood nostalgia, loneliness, fear and sadness he has retained. Captured in a cloudy outline above a small piece of paper, these emotions later extend into the realm of sculpture, painting, and installation. For example, a round-corner canvas that has been imperiled by two-stranded steel cords is reminiscent of a cushion ([Shanghai 2]). Here, benches are not always fantastic, but always mean the suppressed psychology of a school-age writer who had to keep his desk. By the time adult Kang Sang-woo became curious about children's psychology, he remembered that dark blue meant 'obedience,' and inserted the color in the middle of the cushion. Furthermore, the abstract sculpture <Untitled> fixed on the tile wall is a series of reframing landscapes and sculptural techniques that Kang has deeply remembered in his conversation between Giotto di Bonone and Max Ernst. The forms and surface-processing techniques revealed in these works overlap with images of steep nature that appeared in the dreams of young Kang Sang-woo and are reborn as three-dimensional shapes.

Noh Hyun-tak notes that certain events in the past now clash with his feelings. One day, in an attempt to establish his own view of history, he decided to calmly investigate big historical events in which his emotions strongly respond. The writer began to dig into each incident, noting that the key elements of the event and the point at which he felt stimulated were adhered to and that they were adhered to. For example, it is revealed that pigeons flown for the opening of peace at the Seoul Olympics were burned to death by burning torchbearers. This is a device behind the scenes that can be noticed only when you look slowly, overshadowed by the colorful colors and the pleasant atmosphere that animated characters recall. Among the cases that have been collected were "Tokyo RoseTokyo Rose." Tokyo Rose is the name given by U.S. soldiers over Japanese women who were taken prisoner by the U.S. military during the Pacific War (1941-1945) and conducted radio propaganda broadcasts. What caught Noh's eye was a photo of a bomber with a character from the Tokyo Rose. He shakes at the conflicting image of a character visualizing a Japanese female host on a radio that U.S. soldiers have "imagined" and a U.S. bomber exercising "real" physical violence.

From 2016, Noh began drawing figures with a low-frequency stimulator on his arm to visualize the tension between the actual event and the imaginary element involved in its periphery. The function of the stimulator, which stimulates the muscles of the area when attached to the body, intuitively reveals the external force exerted on the character in the event that Roh Hyun-tak pursues. Through this, his recent characters in the canvas look distorted and twisted. In the next step, Roh Hyun-tak added a brush touch with the hand that removed the stimulator to restore the person to his original condition. It is part of his intention that the moment he wears a stimulator on his arm, the person will be portrayed distorted. On the other hand, the body of drawing and the result of the shaking of the figure itself are physical forces that are beyond the will. This contradiction coincides with the act of Roh Hyun-tak distorting and restoring the figure. This gives room to interpret as a conflict between the resistance to overcome the external stimuli applied to life and the attitude of complying with them.

Shin deals with the title of a divided nation and the sensitive feelings that are revealed when faced with social issues related to it, in an adaptation of the art language. It is up to the viewer to follow the rift between the motif he deals with and the exhibition work he shows. In relation to inter-Korean relations, the unique anxiety of South Korean society affects its members directly and indirectly, regardless of their generation. The author observes and records where these national-level events meet and crumble at the personal level of time for himself and other citizens. At this time, the characteristics of different media, which Shin Jeong-kyun delicately deals with, are also worth noting. Imaging techniques and unknown objects, which are hard to grasp whether they are real or directed, disturb the viewer's gaze and imagination. In the same vein, the act of making viewers lean by putting serious clothing on near-fiction content, or making it difficult to get a sense of the true meaning by wrapping messages of certain weighty events in a modern way.

While he has been in a workshop set up inside the Korea National University of Arts since 2018, Shin has been searching the area around Seokgwan-dong, where the studio is located. In the video, a guide tells ordinary participants about the intertwining of places while touring several spots in Seokgwan-dong. The guide carries a yellow flag with the text "Communist" and mentions the grotesque spread around an art school located on the site of the former Ministry of Security and Science, and also conveys the actual events in a straightforward manner. The voices of the Seokgwan Tour guide are not the only ones that resonate inside the ground floor of the exhibition hall. During the exhibition, Shin will present his agonizing work around a sheet of music titled "Angeobu," which he found in the library of an art schools. The symbol in the musical, which may have been called during the Ahn Ki-bu era, was reconstructed with the sound of the same band, meeting Won Hoon of the National Intelligence Service. This adds to the visual movement in the monitor and encompasses a close sense.

Lee Young-joo is active in Germany, Korea, and the United States. The writer picks up his own metamorphosis, which he perceives as he undergoes historical and social differences in different countries. The author's body turns into a sushi in <Sushi's Song>. At the time of working at a revolving sushi restaurant in Germany, Lee had to wear a short skirt and a jacket reminiscent of Kimono under the direction of the president. This used to lead to cat-calling or men's attention to their "Asian" looks, which prompted Lee to look back on his image from a third party's perspective. Lee Young-joo's appearance on a sushi plate dressed in a nude and dancing with exaggerated smiles seems active as if he refuses to categorize individuals according to culture. Meanwhile, Lee Young-joo in How to Eat Chocolate slowly chews the chocolate down. On the chocolate wrapper, Donald Trump's face is printed, and next to the video is a piece of chocolate made in the shape of a gun. The sweetness of chocolate is a symbolic device that contradicts the violence of weapons. Lee Young-joo's face, which chews on sweet chocolate on a packed screen, shows the aggression a woman can show against nationalism.

In the two videos, Lee's image takes a common form of de-youngization. In other words, Lee intentionally deviates from his fixed role and transforms his own form by appearing in different images. The changing alterations of Lee Young-joo seem to be going through a process of "being" to some extent. This can be seen as Lee's willingness to constantly create his new side in a changing environment.

The new release tells the story of a doctor who moved from North Korea to South Korea and to the United States. Unlike the direct appearance of yourself in the previous videos, here is a metaphorical representation of how contact with other cultures affects one's life through different lives. This objectification is more pronounced in the following. The video is a recording of a screen that wanders for partners on a typical "Online sperm bank" website. The mouse cursor, which is busy trying to find the best partner in the monitor, appears to wander as if turning a blind eye to the message that "a human being has a variety of characteristics and identity." (Kim Yu-bin)