I met a artist today. It happened to be the day I had
got to know her. She contacted me through one of my friends in need of a piece
of writing. I also happened to have no particular schedule for the day so I
passed on a nuance that I can meet right now. However, although she was in a
hurry, she couldn't meet at the moment and checked her schedule quite
meticulously. The feeling I got was that she was very busy and I just guessed
that she probably do part-time jobs here and there. We set the appointment for
late dinner, and I got to see some of her pieces through e-mail. So I got to
meet her a little after nine thirty. She had to come here in a hurry and could
not eat dinner, so we both got a bottle of beer each. We started talking like
that.
She said she was lecturing at a
few preparatory academies for art middle and high schools. Although I could not
understand why she had to work without even being able to request somebody to
write a manuscript for her when her exhibition was only a few days away, I
assumed that there would be some reasonable excuse.
“How long has it been since you graduated?”
“Five...or maybe six years? In
2010.”
Although she looked very young,
she was definitely in her thirties. Her graduation was quite late. It was not
odd however; there are quite a number of art students who go to other universities
late and there is also a number of students with various episodes of their own.
“You graduated quite late. You
must have been financially independent.”
“You are right. I paid for my university
education. I went to school for a few years, took academic leave for a few
years, went to school again, and took on various social roles. In the process,
I wasted a lot of time. I didn’t even have a decent job. I am the second child
of the family. There were wicked things that I had to do to be loved. I think
paying for college was along those lines. I wanted to show my parents that I
could do it too.”
I don’t know if it was her position
that needed to talk and mine that needed to listen, but she continued to pull
out her own story with some hesitation. There were times where the story
randomly cut off – she seemed to be screening some stories at those points. I
wanted to ask more, but I couldn’t drag on anymore because of the time. So I
went straight ahead and asked her about her most eye-catching works. I first pointed
out the neatest work in her portfolio. One could not tell whether it was a
photo or a painting just by looking at its photo. On it was clearly printed what
appeared to be Grid by the famous
Rosalind Krauss.
“This is the latest Tallest, right? Where is this?”
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| Joohee Jeong_tallest_pencil on paper_27 x 39 cm , 2015 |
 |
| Joohee Jeong_stop_pencil on paper_27 x 39 cm , 2015 |
Regarding the New Pieces
“Dubai. It’s just a photo
off Google.”
She answered that she found the
photo of Dubai, that capital of all things especially luxurious even in the
immensely wealthy oil-producing country that is the Arab Emirates, through Google
without hesitation. I was caught off guard, but couldn’t ask more. She caught my
reaction and added,
“Their issues are prominent. It’s
been in the news a lot lately, too.”
I also asked about the other work, Stop.
“They are photo reports. These are photos depicting
people quickly fleeing a terrorist attack by bicycle.”
“But terrorism itself is not the
theme of my work.”
The two new pieces were using
images related to the Middle East, but I did not want to ask more. She planned
to first sketch the work vaguely with a pencil and continue to work the white grid
by painting dots throughout the exhibition. (What I had seen were the
sketches.)
“Even so, it looks like the grid has an
important meaning in the work.”
“The grid has importance of its
own. This process is neither a sophisticated nor a sharp work. It is vague but
exists on a scale and a standard. This I believe can be the conflicting point
of the individual and the society. The vagueness that allows the thought that
class and the layer are different…It can also be thought as a restriction or a
cycle. In this exhibition, the grid will be drawn as part of the process.
Through such process, the self can be both restricted and resolved like a
masochist by the gird.”
She passionately explained about
her own grid usage guidelines. She called the grid standardization and linked
it with the issues of the social system.
“As I have continued to say in the work
process, systems such as consumption, feelings, and standardization of beauty
are not filtered and accepted as the truth. People do not even know how to
swallow or spit it out. It is very direct. Would a further explanation be possibly
needed?”
“So you both like the grid system and hate it.
The grid shapes the individual because it is the system, but the individual
itself also tries to become the gird itself. Therefore the individual and the
society meet inside the grid. Is this what you are trying to say?”
“I think both the
consumption and consuming of the society and the individual is part of the
restraints. Whether it is private or public doesn’t matter. To be exact, they
are so closely intertwined that the boundaries are so vague to differentiate.
So the selection of the image for my work is very private. However, I do use
images that could have such vagueness (when other people see it). ”
“If desire is individuals
dreaming about something, the grid can be said to be training (in a way of
Kojeve) the desire plainly.” The point that the private and the public becomes
the same is an important one. Things that looked very special turns out be
something very average, and the grid makes such illusions. Then, I guess the
grid can be said to the the ‘system of consumption.’”
“If you think about how
the desire of trying to explain about oneself is thin through one’s
consumption, it is very contrasting. Why did the modern mankind choose
manufactured goods paid by money out of all the things that could be used to
present themselves? In fact, what they aim to be presented through such goods
are not the point of width but of height, but more of the the perpendicular position.
Maybe that is why we are actually inversely hanging onto it so much. We know
too much that moving perpendicular is impossible so we are inversely getting
attached to it even more.”
I was awed by her concise consumption theory. When an insect is
trapped in a spider web, they struggle only to be even more tangled. To her,
consumption was just like the spider web. The ambivalence; the more you try to
walk away, the more you get closer to it. Nevertheless, although the image used
in the stop process was a public one, it was chosen for a very private reason.
I wondered why such personal choices were made. I felt the previous work would
explain better. So I pointed at the drawing that looked like personal belongings
of a woman and requested for an explanation.
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| Joohee Jeong_Packed age 3_figure on oil painting_90 x 90 cm_2014[Side Detail Cut] |
 |
| JeongJoohee_Packed age 4_ oil on canvas_90 x 90 cm_2015 |
Packed age.
To be honest, this process really doesn’t need
explanation. College students do this at least once in their campus life. What
I am referring to is depicting a collection of personal belongings. The reason
is quite clear. Normally, an artist wants to draw what they like. Art students
have a distinct taste and collect very unique items, and out of those students,
some female students have really rare items. People want to draw those at least
once. Sure enough, she wanted to fill the drawing up with her own personal
belongings to show her personal taste.
“I first started this work for an exhibition in Germany. We move
to other countries by packing our own personal travel bag. The audience there
would have had no information about me, so they would have guessed my identity,
taste, and age from my travel bag. My job then was to expose myself and make
them see me. ”
She said that she had the experience of participating in the
group exhibition at the Kunstverein of Germany by Mun’s planning. She said she
continued the work here
“What was funny was, some
audiences identify my taste and classify it. I don’t know if it was because I
was of their age. ”
In fact if her belongings in the 20kg travel bag were worth
500,000 won, her friend’s belongings worth 500,000,000 won.
“This picture has a small figure to go with it. It is the same
work but when it is added perpendicularly, (the image of the small person on
the picture) shows.” It cannot be seen from the front, but can be seen only
from the side. Some people notice and some people don’t, but I think such
reaction is also interesting. Also, the doesn’t the image of a person standing
on oil makes it look like they are stuck in a mire or sliding on a pair of
skates?”
This reminded me of the story that Krause had spoken about the
relationship between the verticality and horizontality of the grid, but I will
skip it for now.
“You must be very interested
in the relationship of the individual and the society.”
“I think it comes naturally.”
Then she added on.
“I think that society and the individual live in a restraint
where they consume and deceive each other.”
To her, consumption is deceiving,
and deceiving is closely related to the desire for the higher class. Consumption
is deceiving because it doesn’t make you upper class, but it is also deceiving
because it deceives other people by making it look plausible. ‘Decorating the
outer look’ makes such possible. In order to do so, consumption is needed.
“But our society is a society that cannot have an ascent of the
status. That is why people consume endlessly inversely. ”
I asked. Do you have related experiences? I read the note you sent
me. You said that friends at Seoul all had parents who were of the higher class
such as doctors or lawyers. When did you come to Seoul?
“After the Korean War, my grandfather built a house out of trees
and soil and worked day and night. At a age close to one hundred, he owned all
the land in our li. On the other hand, our family who came to Seoul by selling
a few majigi could only live in a small room that was attached to a restaurant.
I couldn’t bring friends to my house. I was even slapped in the face from my
teacher because I did not bring indoor slippers on the first day of school.
That is the first memories that I have of the city life and the people.”
She spoke so quickly that she panted. Now that she said it, the dreams
of an ascending status and its failures were very closely related to her
personal life.
“So that was when you
started to go back and forth between the city and the country.”
“I went back home every vacation. I helped with the farming work
also.”.
She strongly criticized the consumption culture of the city. Of
course, she herself lived in the city since she moved.
“I think the current
society is in general very obese. There is nothing that is at an appropriate
amount as long as it is connected with consumption. Marketing strategies, media
channel, forms of advertisement, unneeded purchasing desires and showing off,
editing of the life to upload on the SNS, overpriced healing and card bills,
number of commodities, sometimes patience at the rate of frustration and cash on delivery etc. are like inappropriate
volume of high heels and are in the state of expansion. ”
“You think of all phenomenons as consumption.”
I replied cynically.
“Our consumption is in general
very large. If we talk in ways of nutrients, it is in a fat shape with too much
fat. We are consuming not just too much food but bad food like the low quality,
neon pink food such as Apollo. The piled up fat might one day come inside our
inner organs and lead us to suffocation.”
She continued.
“On a side note, I’m skeptical about
air conditioning as well. After all, we’ve lived perfectly well without it all
along. The process of manufacturing air conditioning systems, the impact after
they’ve been made… It’s causing diseases to develop that didn’t exist before,
and vaccines to counteract them. Everything. I still sleep hugging a bamboo
pillow in summer.”
“So ultimately it’s a sort of
skepticism about technology, urban culture, or capitalistic consumer culture.”
Viral outbreaks like SARS or avian flu came suddenly to mind.
“You know the H1N1 virus? They say it’s never been proved,
but it’s generally agreed upon that its fundamental causes were climate change
and destruction of the environment. So humans are catching viruses that used to
only infect birds. Simply put, that means pig and bird and human DNA is becoming
similar, or a situation is being created which is comparable to that, isn’t it?
Why would that be so? Because we live in similar environments consuming similar
foods. Capitalism can only survive while everything produced is consumed.
Animals end up eating human leftovers and it’s the same with medicine. They use
drugs past their sell-by date and unfit for human consumption on animals. The
human population is saturated and how are our desires in comparison? There’s
nothing left. At that point things like vaccines are both poison and life
support system.”
A flood of possibly inaccurate,
useless ‘facts’ about the H1N1 virus suddenly came pouring out of me. A grand
conspiracy theory that the global integration of capitalism could lead to the
combination of DNA itself! But humanity could go extinct. At the very least
there could be a crisis; the human population could sharply decrease. Maybe it’s
the fact that I recently saw the movie Parasite,
but I genuinely believe that the environment and energy are important topics.
Perhaps humanity really should disappear from the face of the Earth. Or couldn’t
there be at least a work like Parasite?
“One question. From that standpoint, what meaning do you want
your works to have on its audience or society as a whole? That is, how
influential do you believe they can be? Artwork can’t cure SARS, can it?”
“First of all, my goal is to seek out and portray things the way
I see it.”
The idea that culture can directly
affect reality could in the wrong hands be as dangerous as fascism. After all,
that is just the sort of thing major corporations like CJ are notorious for. Is
art ultimately just for show? If so, how should it be shown? I went on with
some thought.
“You’re saying that
everyday life is a shock in itself. So revealing the mundane is enough. In that
case, it seems appropriate to view Packed
Age 5: Man Next Door at this point.
Oddly, Man Next Door is composed almost entirely of ready-made objets d’art. The bloodred apron and the
weapons(?) before it make it a visually impressive work. Because of its
somewhat powerful image, I asked her about it expectantly.
“Man Next Door. The
title is unique.”
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Joohee Jeong_Packed Age 5(Title:Man Next Door)_object on canvas_145 x 112 cm _ 2015
|
Man Next Door
“This is an ambiguous work. It’s
meant to be seen with the last piece, Packed
Age. These items are meant to represent individual preferences.
Simultaneously, they convey the owner’s social status. This knife is twenty
years old. Notice the contrast between the apron and boots tattered with age and
the items from the last work.”
There might have been a story behind
the objets. I was especially curious
about the colors. This was clearly no ordinary apron.
“So you’ve
painted the apron red?”
“No, it’s the
man next door’s apron, just the way I took it off him. In the old days, people
used to think butchers were common. But this man had on a Gucci belt. A butcher
who wears a Gucci belt. He caught my eye every time I went to my workroom. He’s
a stylish man with mousse in his hair like Na Hoon-ah, but he’s butchering
carcasses in his bloody gloves and apron. I saw him do this for
years. Every day, every time I saw him, the role he played was so disparate.
She relayed some more episodes with
the man next door. What was especially memorable was the way she emphasized the
Gucci brand. There is an interestingly paradoxical twist to it: the paradox
that the lower someone’s social class, the harder he strives to escape it, and
the more he appears to have succeeded, that much more clearly is the shocking
truth revealed. Žižek once likened that concept of the existing world to the
shape-shifting abilities of Ridley Scott’s extraterrestrials. No matter how
good a job the alien does of mimicking a human being, it can never hide one or
two of its tentacles. Maybe the uncanny emotion the sight evokes was what she
saw in the man next door’s apron.
Musing this and that (I still had to
answer her somehow) I brought the conversation to a smooth close.
“This is what I think. In my eyes Packed Age shows that the items consumed by an individual, that is
to say the artist herself, symbolizes the individual’s hopes, let’s say they’re
symbols of her hopes and dreams—it shows that these symbols are insignificant,
stereotypical. So her private dreams are actually those that are dreamed by the
public. But in the case of Man Next Door,
the butcher next door himself physically embodies an object that he tries to
hide by consuming luxury brand goods like Gucci, for reasons that can’t be helped. We see it and are disquieted by it. The butcher is a system
that has outsourced the act of butchering away from our private lives. Because we don’t want to face it.
In that way the two pieces are connected. You could call it a schizophrenic
individual-public. The individual seeks to not fall apart from the public
through consumption. But that consumption is accompanied by negative elements
(like the butcher’s knives). The two are two sides of
the same coin.
* * *
As we talked, the time was heading
for midnight. The two beers we ordered were already exhausted. She apologized
in between to answer her calls from work.
“Do you have any
difficulties while you are working?”
“My work starts from
psychology and feelings, but some people disagree. Some people say that your
story cannot include your feelings. However, the shock that the individuals
feel is very important to me. The shock that someone feels cannot be a
category. ”
“I think the part you just said is very important. Comparative
shock. Such shocks would be interesting when they are considered complexly in
the work.”
“What would be your overarching theme at this point? Would you
be able to rephrase it?”
“I want to be interested in the obesity of consumption or
information. I want to continue thinking about the individual and the society.”
(End)
정주희 joohee Jeong
http://jeongjoohee.blogspot.kr/
+82-(0)10-3171-9202
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