Illusion and Fantasy, a thematic exhibition which exemplifies the diversity of comtemporary art, is held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, in gallery 3, 4, from February 10th to May 6th. The exhibition is to observe the wide spectrum of contemporary artistic practices, which are based on realistic representation, in the context of fantasticalness. The showcases around thirty works realized in such diverse mediums as painting, sculpture, video, photography and installation by seven artists: Youngmin Kang (1969-), Hyungkoo Kang (1954-), Myungkeun Koh (1964-), Hyunmi Yoo (1964-), Kwangho Lee (1967-), Sungmyung Chun (1971-) and Xooang Choi (1975-).
Illusion and Fantasy,
And Some Fragments of Truth
Present-day capitalist society concentrates on targeting the unconsciousness of humans and produces images through which reality is influenced and transformed by ever more plausible illusions. We are all the time surrounded by a plethora of such images as the world is overcrowded with them. Yet these futile and meaningless images are absent of value. This aspect of our times is reflected upon or criticized by visual artists through diverse mediums and with different attitudes. In this exhibition emphasis is given to the elements of representation, illusion and fantasy while focusing on the matters of life. In particular, it intends to feature and examine works by those artists who bridge between the two seemingly most disparate realms of the real and the illusionary by starting at the real and the representational and then filtering them through the sifter of the illusionary. The exhibition does not merely aim to showcase illusionary or fantastical images as artistic outcomes. Rather, it sees the quintessence of fantasy-fantasticalness-in the camouflaging of an intention to break from the oppressions of reality and gratify the inner desires and observes the various ways to realize it. Fantasticalness defines one of the extended thinking attitudes of artists, and the creativity and positivity of it may be interpreted in terms of contemporary art’s diversity and the fundamental nature of art.
The common denominator among the works of the seven participating artists- Youngmin Kang, Hyungkoo Kang, Myungkeun Koh, Hyunmi Yoo, Kwangho Lee, Sungmyung Chun and Xooang Choi -is that they first transport us to different worlds through the realistic and the representational and then invite us to unfamiliar realms through the illusionary and the fantastical. When an illusion is a partial and passive form that derives from an image itself, a fantasy is an active and extended world into which the subject’s active act-imagination-intervenes. Artists effectively perform their role as a “discoverer of hidden desires” with this and in this sense artists are mediators. Their works possess the element of fantasticalness, which can be closely related to the embodiment of humans’ inner desires. To borrow Sigmund Freud’s own borrowing from Hamlet’s Polonius’ words, their fantasies are “baits of falsehood to catch a carp of truth”. Also, they are, as Carl Jung said, active imaginations to overcome the ego and self-sustaining and beyond the conscious. This has productive and positive attributes. In literature and art fantasticalness is not a result but a process and a course. It is, therefore, a means to delve into one of the cardinal nature of art-to raise the question of the truth about life and its meaning. It characterizes a dynamic world which is reflective of the human desire and creative will to gain access to our origin and nature and to the world of truth.
It is in this manner that the works shown here obtain their significances. To do so, they use strategies that can be uncomfortable and unfamiliar to viewers to some extent. What they present us is something uncomfortable, but that discomfort somehow makes us to linger more in front of them politely asking us to cast a deeper look at them. In dealing with fantasticalness, these works employ such key tactics as placing limitations on time and space, converting everyday reality into psychological reality, defamiliarizing the familiar and colliding the real with the unreal. And this leads to the building of unfamiliar doors through which one can enter from one world to another. One needs to remove the outer surface directly visible to his or her eyes and look into what is beyond it. After all, the fantasticalness of the works represents the artists’ scorching thirst for the truth about man and life. All the works shown here share the same route called “fantasy”, yet each work uses different ways in probe into life and truth. And what have been secretively delivered to us, the viewers, are some “fragments of truth”.
