Exhibition Information

Anorthoscope
2020 © SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation and the Artist. All rights reserved Acyrlic on canvas 194 x 130cm

Anorthoscope
2020 © SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation and the Artist. All rights reserved Unique chromogenic print 230 x 127cm

Anorthoscope
2020 © SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation and the Artist. All rights reserved Acyrlic on canvas 194 x 130cm

Anorthoscope
2020 © SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation and the Artist. All rights reserved Unique chromogenic print 232 x 127cm

			The Very Eye of Night

Oh Yeon-jin has been conducting various experiments to explore the mediumness of photographs based on the printing method in which numerous variables work within the working process. The artist, who has been working across the boundaries of the genre, paying attention to the relationship between various media such as photos, paintings, and prints, will present his new film "Anorthoscope" (2020), which reproduces images of the video in his own way. "Anorthoscope" is a work based on the 1958 black-and-white short dance film "The Very Eye of Night" by Maya Deren (1917–1961). The movie begins with images of dancers shot with negative film on a dark night sky-like background with shining starlight. At first glance, figures such as flat paper dolls are given motion on the screen that will soon be converted, and black backgrounds are rich as if dancing independent of gravity in an infinite space. Deren's video, which reproduces an ancient myth about constellations as a dancer's gesture, gives an ecstatic impression that it seems to transcend physical time and space. What's more remarkable is that the camera's role in the work not only captures the movements of dancers, but also maximizes their movements through certain filming and editing techniques. The dancer's movement of one foot leads to a transition scene, where each scene in this segmented time is interconnected through the continuous movement of the body. In other words, their 'movement' is once again obtained through a medium called image.

"Moving" is a keyword that Oh Yeon-jin has consistently revealed through her recent works, and "time" is at the starting point of the interest. Looking at the "Serial Book Series" from the beginning of the work, the author captured the video work of the same name in 2015's "Still Mute" divided by various frames per second, and presented these images with image scales proportional to each frame per second. The 2017 work "Quad by Ratio" assumes what would happen if the square stage, in which the short play of Samuel Bechket (1906-1989), changes at different rates, and shows traces of agonizing over what structure the movement will be extended. What's interesting is that the process of exploring these variations under certain conditions was the beginning of interest in the 'time' and subsequent 'movement' that was eventually predicated on all changes, according to the author.

Oh Yeon-jin reproduces the image of Deren in two main ways. First, the paintings installed in the center of the exhibition hall were completed by placing images printed on translucent chiffon cloth on canvas frames and adding acrylic paint to them. The canvas surface, which has been coated several times with paint, is expressed in a smooth texture, like a film, rather than a fabric that is absorbed. On the walls of the exhibition hall, the results of the canvas, which served as a kind of "pan," are displayed without frames or frames. Several variables generated in the process of controlling CMY filter values or the time of exposure during printing have resulted in various results that are difficult for the author to predict. For example, theoretically, canvas color complement should be developed, but the number of unexpected colors depending on the light surrounding it, or the number of cases that vary depending on the time of the second that gives the glow, is conditions that the author may or may not control. Through this process, the scenes of "The Night's Eye," which appeared in reverse shapes and colors, are symmetrical with the original images on the canvas, and are displayed along with the virtual water images that the author worked on with a graphic program.

Another work, "Lamella" (2020), is a series of six photographs of various bubbles based on a black background. The fact that the subject that Oh Yeon-jin first captured on the camera as a common filming technique is "spray drop" is in line with past works that used fluid film. The artist has been conducting various experiments such as putting slime in a small case made with OHP film or taking pictures with water on a glass plate to change the condition of "film" and create a variable image that changes with the flow. The membrane of soap bubbles is a fluid substance with instantaneous properties in that it varies in shape and dimensions depending on the frame and explodes without long lasting. The iridescent spectrum on the membrane also exists in an unsecured and continuously flowing form, with different patterns depending on light or angle. The nature of soap bubbles, which are determined by conditions, has long been a concern of many scholars as well as writers, and the 19th century physicist Joseph Plateau (1801-1883), who discovered the law between bubbles, makes the soap bubble more attractive to him as an ice-free imaging device, Anotoscope and Pestiskov.

Oh Yeon-jin defines 'moving image' as an image with changing conditions. Scenes that are produced without the premise that images can be moved are different from those that are not. "Moving" doesn't necessarily mean that the image moves. In this exhibition, for example, Maya Deren's image is copied from video to canvas, and then re-created in photographs by working in the darkroom. Images of canvas and photographs hung on ceilings and walls have the potential to continue to expand through changing non-sequentiality as they move through media. In that it suggests that the image can continue to change without being fixed, Oh Yeon-jin's work is a moving image that retains its motion, although it seems to be stationary.

The reason why such a moving world is at an unrivaled point is that in this world, it can be ice-free to not moving. Where motionless things can move, the still image only reaches the possibility of no ice.


1) Maya Deren: Born in Ukraine and active in the United States, she is the founder of dance films and the godmother of experimental films. The American Film Institute established the Maya Deren Award, which is awarded annually to independent and experimental filmmakers. He left short films such as "A Study in Choreography for Camera" (1945), and "Mesh of the Afternoon" (1943), including his original work "The Very Eye of Night" (1958.

2) The law exists between soap bubbles: If you look closely at the bubbles, you can see an interesting structure: adjacent bubbles share a lamella and there is a line where three bars meet (no more than two or four bars meet!). Therefore, the angle between the membranes is around 120°. In addition, four lines meet at one point (there is no case where more than three or five lines meet). This line is called the "Plateau border" and "Plateau's law" after 19th century Belgian physicist Joseph Plato, who discovered this phenomenon. (Kang Seok-ki, Physics of Bubbles, Dong-A Science, https://dongascience.com/news.php?idx=632)

3) Anotoscope and phenakystic scope: A device that rotates a still image and converts it into a motion image.