Plane of Abstraction or Outside

The 20th century taught us the ideas of relativity, complexity, presentness and concreteness instead of those of absoluteness, purity, eternity and infinity. Nevertheless, the ideal and metaphysical conditions are the important factors to consider in the field of art. Abstraction is one of the universal aspects of cognition in the respect that it is the process of abstracting the common features from those that are different. Even if the ideas such as absoluteness, purity, eternity and infinity are fictitious, their linguistic existences are more than sufficient to provoke intense inspirations in one’s mind.

Abstraction answers to the complex reality of the present world with the potentials of the world to come. Artists do not fail to realize new ideas through their artistic efforts and make them be adopted into the world. Where do all these potentials come from? An abstract plane constantly throws the incidents and forms which had not been existed into the world as if it were a huge wall of the universe. We are unable to figure out what is present outside of the wall. It would be the place where every possibility and potential is created. Will there ever be the day when science or technology explores into the outside of the wall? Artists make full use of their imagination, effort and inspiration so as to realize the place in the world of ours.

Ahn Kyuchul (1955- ) has shown conceptual art from the standpoint of social criticism by working with various media, including photographs, sculptures, and writings, since the mid 1980s. He is also a leader of the trend towards unique conceptual art, which appeared in the 1980s, characterized by the descriptive borrowing of restrained objects.
<The Man's suitcase> (1993), his most representative work of art, intensively shows the thematic ideas of "Fiction and Reality" that run through his entire body of work. This work - which consists of 11 of pieces of his drawings and their corresponding written texts, and a bag, which is the focal material of the writings - freely presents a bag made in the concrete shape of a wing as if it had already appeared in a story, after telling the story about a bag left behind by an unknown man, through his drawing. Through this work, Ahn Kyuchul shows that fiction and reality are interconnected with each other like a fish net, and can never be separated.

Inside <The Man's suitcase>, there is the wing of a man who accidentally came across the bag and asked someone to keep it for him. However, in reality, it is not certain what is inside the bag because nobody opened it to check it. This story is surely fiction, but there are believable elements as well. This is due to the presence of the "wing", which is a concrete yet abstract and contradictory object. Abstract ideas such as "dream" or "hope" or "happiness" exist beyond reality. However, the concrete object is the "wing", which consists of feathers, and the wing is in the bag.  Here, the wing belongs to some other, and is entrusted to me, and I don't want to open it willingly. From the ‘winged’ shape of the bag, viewers might be led to believe it is a wing. This also is the projection of uncertainty and hope. We believe what this artist has to say. However, at the same time, we think that what he says might not be true. We only hope it to be true, and so on. Abstractness has an aspect of absence. This is a unique perspective that we can produce regarding an object. What is contradictory is that, the essence of an object exists only through this insufficient viewpoint.

Oh Heinkuhn's (1963- ) work titled <Ajuma wearing a jade green colored Korean traditional dress> (1997) expresses the position of the ajuma in Korean society. This work of art tells us that women are perceived as someone's wife or mother, rather than as esteemed, independent members of this society. That is, his photos are not portraits of the average ajuma, but instead indicate problems with the structure of Korean society.

The <Ajuma> series consists of photos whose extremely realistic descriptions of people leave a strong impression on the viewer.  Flash lighting, which momentarily sheds light from beneath on the frontal side of these women, makes the background relatively darker and changes their faces to look strong and abstract. Through their keen facial expressions and their upper body, which appears to rise up from the darkness, this artist is raising questions about the ambiguous characteristics of people who belong to the class called "ajuma". Like Deleuze's expression, the face is "Two points on a white plate", but the face is also simply a transparent screen that covers multitudes of layers if it is not an indication of authority. Multitudes of faces, which can be found in the magician, show that this place is an endless battlefield of abstractness.

Lee Yonghbaek (1966- ) is an artist who has been exploring the common ground between digital culture and art. <An angel-a soldier> (2005) was created by combining various methods, including performances, installations, and videos. It consists of several settings, such as the background and foreground made of cloth with printed patterns of colorful flowers, six soldiers wearing uniforms made of fabric with the same flower patterns, and a setting of artificial flowers hanging from the space in front of them. This space is artificial and is filled solely with colorful artificial flowers. It implies a "world of simulation".
The setting, in which the soldiers are completely camouflaged with artificial flower patterns and walking forward with a gun, is a simulation space implying an extreme battlefield that can determine life or death. The soldiers' advancing movements are almost unnoticeable because they are moving extremely slowly. Internet logos such as Windows, Quicktime, Word, and Explorer are written on the soldiers' uniforms, and the names of master artists such as Beuys, Picasso, Duchamp, Baek Numjun, and da Vinci are written on their name tags. The real survival and status of art become ambiguous, and the artists express themselves only when they borrow a form of simulation, such as reproduction and reconstitution, rather than original creation. This means that today's art is becoming an extremely strategic product in the process of numerous reproductions and compilations, and modifications in a virtual space

Kim Tschangyeul’s (1929- ) works of art from the 1970s show a highly unique painting style based on the 'Eastern mentality'. By drawing transparent water drops on a refined canvas, he suggested an extreme phantom, which coincides with a supporting structure called the canvas. The critic Oh Gwangsu stated that this can be understood within the frame of‘self-reverting monochrome’painting. It is a space where a 'plane' as a basic condition of painting and a screen as a field of concepts are created. According to Kim Tschangyeul's reflection, his water drop painting started when he was in Paris in 1972. After spraying water on the rear side of a canvas, he accidentally discovered the formation and flow of water drops, and was mesmerized by their transparency. He immediately started to draw the specter of water drops on his canvas. His painting screen has reached an area of abstract painting that allows various formative experiments using this motif.

His work <Untitled>, which was created in 1969, shows abstract motifs consisting of small spheres. Before this, he once started works by drawing holes, which remind people of injuries or bullet marks, on a rough painting surface. It looks as if the transparent, purple-colored spheres are changing to round particles as the center of the canvas degenerates. The process whereby the painting's surface starts to change to organic grains subsequently forms water drops on the canvas’ surface. The painting screen is both the injured skin as well as an organic surface changed by such injuries. At the same time, it is a field of power concentration that oozes water like sweat. Such an interpretation of the painting’s surface signifies unique memories and experiences that cannot be explained by abstract expressionism or the concept of informel. Memories of the pain and hurt experienced during Korea's modern history, a dualistic structure of forgetfulness and retrospection, symbols of blood and sweat, and the artist's desire to formulate all of these in his painting are contained in this work of art. In that sense, <Untitled> provides an exceptional clue that helps viewers to understand "water drop painting".

Rhee Kibong's (1957- ) <Vegetarian>(1995), his most representative work, deals with the relationship between nature and humans. The horses in this work symbolize nature. Among the three horses facing the wall, one is covered with cow leather, while another has a black, human shape painted on a white background. The third horse is black and has sticks attached to it. Each of these horses has a symbolic meaning. The horse covered with cow leather signifies the possibility of mutation by genetic engineering, whereas the white horse drawn in human form symbolizes humans who constantly resist nature even though they live in nature.

The title ‘Vegetarian’ seems to refer to a horse, which is a herbivorous animal. However, when thinking of 'vegetarianism', humans usually assert certain “-ism”. If so, then the title seems to indicate humans' obstinacy in insisting upon their ideas about the providence of nature. The shapes of these three horses are familiar to us, but their peculiar surfaces, or their heads facing the wall, look unnatural and surreal. Such an intentional transformation of horses implies that horses are conceptual beings which are related to our imagination. The surfaces of the three horses are covered with the shadows and traces of various humans. Grass-eating horses seem to suggest the word 'words’ (mal), which phonetically sounds the same as the word 'horse’ (mal) in the Korean language. The ‘words’may cause entanglements with other concepts, and due to too much talking by many people, the usage of words has become stained or changed. <Vegetarians> induces the projection of various, familiar concepts, and also causes a combination of intricate meanings through their connectivity. In that sense, this work of art invites active appreciation.