월간미술 2020년 9월 작가 리뷰
안종현 징후 혹은 증후로서의 장소와 사진에 대하여 | 김현주
<A Distance From Where I Stand> critique
Jinhyuk Kim, <From Death to Immunity>
From Death
In the posthumous work 『On Late Style』, Edward Said classifies the ending works of artists in two different types. One attempts to resolve the criticism and debate toward himself by looking back on all existing work and pursue harmony and reconciliation in all social, political, historical aspects. Another attempts to break away from the existing discourses and takes the last work as a new starting point. If the former is considered as a stable task schismatizing and organizing the awareness as well as phenomenological existence of the artist himself, and the latter is considered as a rather risky task that can damage the whole reputation as an artist unless all last energy is scraped off. Of course, the latter is more interesting. It gets rid of all the authorities or formats that were restricting the artist himself, and enables the ‘anachronistic’ creation. Like so, death facing the artists holds new life force. Even if we do not have a new born nephew, read Heidegger or Jaspers, or shout out Carpe diem after watching <Dead Poets Society’, we are naturally intrigued by the renewable life force. To me, Artist Jonghyun An is intriguing in the same way.
When judging the identity or value of an artist, I focus on the consistency of the past works rather than the completeness of the current. Artist Jonghyu An was interesting, but his identity was not easy to grasp. By the time he is judged to have reached the top in a certain form of photography, he presented photos that are in a complete different dimension as if he had sentenced death to his previous works. <Red Room>(2011) is the record of brothels built around the military units in the extension of war. It neutrally captures the space, which is the epitome of the extreme narrative condensed with the history of desire and violence, and reproduced the symbolic objets as a photo images with balance and beauty, thereby stirring up the problems of reality which contradicts the image. The followed up work <Future Land>(2013) reminds the circulatory concept of time by expanding the prophecy, history, and reality of Goduam into photograph while calling on the new future and prophecy. Standing out in the work were the balanced framing of a large camera reminiscent of German style, consistent camera height, accurate horizontality and verticality, low saturation and cold color temperature. It showed high degree of completeness, but it was also far from the images of <Red Room>. By the <Passage>(2015), low saturation disappears and the frame is filled with the various visual symbols that were almost polluting Jongno.
The colorful visual symbols of Jongno, which all people in Seoul must be familiar, are recorded in such organized composition that it almost feels foreign. The photographs raise the latent reality from the pool of reality, presenting the possibility for imagining and creating a new world. Artists’ critical mind is not directed towards subject or space, but himself. From <Red Room> to <Landscape>(2017), I was able to affirm the aesthetic achievement towards the establishment of photography’s subjectivity as well as the photographer’s identity. However, the image subject and visual spectrum were too wide and diver to judge the artist’s independent value or identity. Beyond the individual aesthetic achievements, it took a little more time to grasp the value in the social, political, and historical context.
From Consciousness to Aesthetics
From the destroyed brothels, small valleys in Gangwon-do, streets of Jongno, burnt mountains to DMZ, locating himself in space and time seems an important premise to the Artist Jonghyun An. The artist’s philosophy, that is very much like the principle of documentary photography, may be seen as dogmatic, especially since it is the era that trans-media flourishes according to the technological innovation and drawing boundaries between photo-design-digital image and printings are considered as narrow minded. However, the philosophy secures the independent status of photography, in other words ‘placeness of consciousness.’ Today, we can create two-hour film using just the graphic work. Virtual space can be created, and vector-based images such as illustrations can be enlarged infinitely. These two are closely related to the physical space. Without even requiring to visit the space, filming is made possible on screen or by remove control. Distinguishing the graphic image of virtuality from actuality is no longer possible. However, the fundamental documentary approach demands the artist to encounter the physical fact, thus enabling to index the existing consciousness of the artist through photography, as well as the place where the body and the consciousness had resided when creating the work. From the most films including animations, hyperrealism works, virtual graphic space of interior designer, to the paintings of David Hockey which delicately portrays the sense of reality, indexing the place of consciousness and body at the time of creation is impossible. Of course, the place of consciousness in Jonghyun An’s photography is not as clear either as a specific coordinates. But the place of consciousness is further, closer, or at a medium distance from the space in the photo. What is certain is that the consciousness exists in it. In Bergson’s phenomenology, which laid an important foundation for the modern philosophy, consciousness refers to the circulating dynamics of memory; it is formed as the body sense the real world and then affects the reality and the body senses. The memory composing the consciousness indexed in the Jonghyun An’s work include the war experienced of himself and his father who had lost the hometown to the war and had fled to the south, the commending troops near the division, the abnormal city structure observed as a photographer and as a citizen of divided nation, the socio-political break up based on the ideology, and the physical separation caused by the deterioration of father’s health and virus outbreak. Through his photography, the artist allows us to feel ‘the reality segregated from the reality’ surrounding our daily lives. Although these realities are composed with the familiar elements such as the texture of bark, barbed wire, and bricks which was reproduced by the dense medium/large film and sensor’s pixel, they are currently existing problems of actual reality. Through the unfamiliar scenery which we have never encountered, they are presented at a far, close, or in between in the form of beauty or hideousness. The works that is open to many interpretation depending on the consciousness and situation of the audience commonly guarantees the fact that our consciousness anticipate, interact, and give new meaning to the confronted undelightful reality inside the photo thereby enabling the possibility for new vital force.
From Gestures to Sculpture
Looking at Jonghyun An’s work, the first thought comes to mind is that “camera is not steady.” The artist takes a typical reportage documentary work style which records unspecific subjects and landscapes as he explores and crosses the scene within the limited opportunity. Although it is very different from typology or studio photography where formative stability is secured within given format, all of his images possess compositional and formative stability as if they were organized to be captured in that specific way. The images of the barbed wire fence against the sky or the sky blue curtain inside the asylum give the impression that the structure is perfected within the image as if they were carefully designed. This formative characteristic of the artist is closely related to the artists’ camera choice and camera work. Today, the news is broadcasted on smart phones, any image is considered as photography once the image go through the conventional darkroom printing or ink-jet printer, and the poor image became the mainstreams of communication. The discussion on the choice of camera today may be the baic topic can only interest people in popular photography communities such as amateur societies or SLR clubs. However, considering that photographers like Alec Soth and Andreas Gursky always mention the use of large format camera in writings such as writer’s note, critiques, or descriptions in Gagosian or MOMA, camera is evidently still an important factor influencing the format of photo image as well as the encountering method for the artists and scenery at the time of recording. For the Jonghyun An’s earliest works like <Army>(2005-2007) series or <Red Room>, several works utilizes the flexible and colorful positioning, perspective of lens, and distortion of the 35mm small camera. The latent narrative on the subject is emphasized by inducing flow of sight while accentuating the subject format structurally. The <Future Land> features almost perfect camera work of a large-sized camera such as controlled distortion and straight framing of the architectural and interior photography. Although the subject of <Future Land> was the rock that is stretched out into the sky and the modern straight-concrete structure, taking a stable shot in unfamiliar scene with a large camera weighing about 10kg including the tripod is completely different from attempting various shots using DSLR camera. This may have been possible because the artist has been handling large sized camera probably since before his start studying photography. In works after <Passage> in 2015 such as <Landscape>, the artists took advantage of the medium-sized digital back, effectively controled distortion, and captured wide range of subject and landscape composition. In some cases, the artist created photographic portraits of symbolic beings using flexible method like 35mm. The various and precise camera works constructed in the series of processes are also stood out in the work in DMZ, asylum, and US military base in <Fire of Beginning> and <Far, Close, In Between>. From the roots of the burned down tree, ownerless chair on the riverbed, to the water reflecting the sky beyond the border, the structure of scenery seem very stable that the accidental encounter of the objects feels inevitable. However, creation of such photographic images is not solely dependent on the camera. If the media is the extension of body and camera the extension of eye as the seniors claim, this achievement is completed by the proficient body and physical performance of the photographer encountering the scene. From the point of view that photography is not only the objects like technology, things, and media, but also the existential gesture that face, remember, and visualize objects, the artist’s practice of ‘photographing’ has shares some elements with the performer’s practice. Not only from the perspective of modern and contemporary dance that focuses on the body in phenomenology and representation of consciousness, but also from the perspective of the contemporary dance that focuses on the affection, variable, and cracks, revealing performer’s individual existence through body is the basic framework for the performance. The individual existence. This abstract goal interestingly presupposes two physical conditions. They are ‘learning and accumulation(in the body)’. For example, no matter how thin the arms of ballerina or ballerino are, their flexor carpi radialis is visibly developed. This is because they intentionally fix the arm and twist the wrist so that the inside the elbow and the palm of the hand are facing the same direction to keep the straight line of the arm in ballet. In the case of legs, noticeable compared to the general people is the sartorius muscle used for hip joint exercise. This traces are accumulated in the body through physical practice and repetitions. The accumulated muscles enables the delicate reproduction of technical movement and performance on the stage. In the process of repetition, the dancers instill emotions from the consciousness, interact with the outside fields, and learn the way to exist in that specific time and space. similar to the accumulation and learning of a dancer, or a performer, the camera work techniques of a photographer, especially documentary photographer, expands to the practice of revealing the way of gazing and reproducing, moreover, of revealing own existence. Of course, just like the performer’s consciousness is not completely equate with the physical representation, the photographer’s consciousness is not fully conveyed through photography. There is always a room for various interpretations for the audience. However, the body that learned the possibility of existence guarantees the existence of the artist himself without being subordinate to the mass or strength. Jonghyun An’s works sit in between the technical representation of the reality of camera, and subjective representation based on the artists’ own impression. On a tight balance between media characteristics and existential practice of the objective photographs, ‘luck’ will lead the artist to present the minimal possible resolution for the philosophical debate that has been expanded endlessly to the rationalism and empiricism, conception and abstraction, material and memory, and actuality and virtuality.
To Immunity
The <Far, Close, In Between>(2020) composing the exhibition <A Distance From Where I Stand> is the record of place where the artist’s memory is headed, using the method which the artist’s body remembers, with its axis on the reality of division. Taken using the common landscape recording format, the images capture the ‘natural’ scenery which is physically inaccessible due to the division caused by political ideology and power, representing the ‘unnatural’ reality of the DMZ. Or the images capture the US military base and asylum that seems foreign and unnatural in the photograph, but has naturally settled in our land. The artist’s memory faces the reality on the extremely socio-political and historic context, while building a grand narrative from <Army>, <Red Room> to this exhibition. However, Jonghyun An’s work is not an emotional essay. The individual images does not require structural or semiotic interpretation or iconologic approach either. Rather, the actual element that writes the narrative lies in front, back, side, top, or under the 1/m millimeter screen or 0.4mm photo paper which the photo image is located. It is the collective memory or individual emotions of the artist and our society. This narrative taste bitter and feels far away. Most intentionally keep enough distance. Today, we are accustomed to keep distance. Amid of global virus outbreak, distancing can often determine life and death. In the situation of war and division, the debate on appropriate distancing could divide our nation into two extremes. In the rampant situation of condolences, remembrance, loss, and wounds caused by the issues, we decides to keep distance to turn away so that the problem is pushed aside as one of the numerous external spectacles. The end of the severance, eventually requires immunity. It is not easy making antibody for immunity. First, we have to confront the cause(antigen). It accompanies countless arguments along with slight and unpleasant fever. If the pathogen is already dead or weakened, the process could be easy. But it’s not always the case. If unhealthy, pathogen may invoke even bigger side effects before reaching the immunity. This is why we often push back the schedule of going to the hospital for flue shot when we all know the vaccination is necessary. If so, how close are you to the exhibition <A Distance From Where I Stand>? Problems of complex aesthetics and reality may knock on your head, but conversely, it can also completely turnaway and keep enough distance. What do you feel and how close do you feel from the photographs consisting <A Distance From Where I Stand>? Someone may feel the formative beauty or hideousness of the scenery, and other may recall the historical knowledge, memory, or political opinion on the beings inside the photos. These sentiments can enter deep inside your heart to impress or cause hatred. It can also invoke remembrance and condolences for others from an appropriate distance, or be perceived as an objective information from a far away. The distance does not matter. The answer is not there. We can go right in front or on the surface of the photograph, but there is no way to fully feel the artist’s true intention as well as the emotion and situation that he felt at the time of photographing. The artist stands behind the photograph, and the solution is impossible to locate as to where or how far. The only thing accessible to us is the photo in between. Only the photograph. The photograph contains endlessly ruthless, cold, miserable objective facts, or subjective reality which wounds and memories are taken to heart. For the immunity from them, what could we do? The title ‘Far Close In Between’ is actually the order of practicing shooting in the army. Aiming at the target in far, close, in between is necessary for the effective combat, but it cannot end the war. This exhibition which urges to face the problems of reality at far, close, in between distance cannot solve the issues either. Nevertheless, the exhibition answers. ‘The distance from you and I, in between, there is a passage of photograph. The photographs which we must face.’