ALLURE I MEGAPOP
Written by Koo, Ki soo (Art Specialist)
‘Those models for the masters, those actresses with the charming blonde, the graceful and elegant greenish white porcelains and the moon-shaped jars..... In the crossed time and space the new visual languages are conceived, evolving to be linked with the past tradition.'
Historically, the pop art emerged primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom in late 1950s. It was named so by Lawrence Alloway who described the new visual tendency first. Thus, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Indiana and David Hockney used the historical background of their time as motives to describe every facet of the pot culture with their own explicit and outspoken visual languages.
The pop artists represented intact the images of the mass media neither positive nor negative, brainstorming our brains by using the commercial techniques only to confuse us. (In the United States and Europe around that time, the mainstream was the personal and subjective Abstract Expressionism. Thus, the pop art put up the slogan "Let's return to objective and universal ones," and therewith, confronted the tradition, refusing any superiority or authority championed by the mystery high art.)
Furthermore, the pop artists reflected their contemporary issues faithfully on their visual art as if they were the reporters searching for a special coverage. In this course, they accommodated and even exploited the images easily comprehensible by the mass media in an effort to meet the curious needs of the people.
The Dadaism which had praised its comtemporary mass products only to help narrow the gap between fine art and everyday life was most highlighted by Marcel Duchamp. On the other hand, Fernand Leger would represent a precise and structural image of the industrial age in his painting in an attempt to mock the mechanic industry. In particular, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein both of whom borrowed a technique from the commercial printing to use it impressively for their art works - while the former borrowed pop stars' images primarily, the latter used to copy the images of the cartoon series - introduced to us the symbolic, anonymous and offensive visual expressions.
Here is the artist Kim Joong-sik, who tries the unending adventure of the pot art. He induces an unfamiliar and vague dialogue with the mass by means of a cross-encounter between 'the Oriental ceramics' and 'the Western images.' The artist crosses and overlaps 'the Oriental ceramics,' the models for the past Western master painters' and 'the monumental stars in modern and contemporary times,' thereby interpreting them visually to please us.
Kim Joong-sik introduces to us a structural methodology of hybridizing some original photos on the electronic paper to create a painting work. His primary aesthetic concern is not with a symbolic implication derived from the relationships among objects. Rather, he pursues the generation and restructuring of the painting. Hence, his art works are the results of some new visual transformations through reproduction and borrowing of the images. In addition, his opinion about the objects is that although the conventional images have changed, we should give new names to their objects in consideration of their 'state of life' and 'their essential values.' (Exploration of a new visual approach to the pop art).
In his long journey to a perfection of forms, he starts with 'collection of images.' The breathless lifes captured are placed on a virtual electronic screen to be disassembled and reassembled beyond the fragmental expression. After all, the unfamiliar images become the lifes which may exist somewhere are getting their breath back on the monitor. To him, the transformation of an image is motivated to produce another image through the selection of objects represented or not. Namely, a new potential of creativity would be found through reproduction. ('The aura' would be born, as mentioned by Walter Benjamin.)
Kim Joong-sik uses the crystals resulted from such media test and therewith, begins to undertake the labor-intensive and analogic 'drawing work.' Thereafter, he fills the surface of the prototype paper or the 2D screen 'ordered' and 'opened' with other matters and again, superimposes some iconic dual images thereupon only to render his own unique visual amusement. Such formative approach of his allows us to reilluminate the new charms and values of the pop art in the arena of communication.
To Kim Joong-sik, the expansion of the expressive tools (photo images, computer, painting, etc.,) has some formative implications; his tools have expanded not only necessarily but accidentally also. Namely, the imitation of the things and objects created already allows for harmonious but accidental results in the course of the mathematical operations by the computer. The images reproduced in his painting generation and organization may suggest some charming formative methodology increasing the motives and curiosity of the expression if they were shown to the past pop artists.
It is deemed not that culture develops because something new emerges but that culture is born in diverse forms while it is being given a life again by the sublimation between tradition and modernity. We may well find the diversity of arts and their qualitative accumulation in the records of such culture forms. Such diversity and qualitative accumulation must be an engine of power stimulating other cultures. In a culture built in such a way, the process of searching for and expanding the origins of new changes depends wholly on the situation of the time facing the artists.
Ultimately, a continuity of the cultural creation is maintained through 'new discovery' and 'reinterpretation' of the existing culture, and the engines of such growth are 'new meanings' and 'new values' born from the situational background of reality. Such a series of processes may frequently be recognized as accidental, but they must be inevitable to the artist Kim as well as in our society, economy, culture and politics at large.
We will have different visual experiences in the cross-encounters between figures and objects or the harmony between tradition and modernity. Kim Joong-sik introduces to us the objects he clearly likes, and impresses us with a unique, logical and intricate formative methodology for the objects. In addition, the artist permits us to start an amusing visual journey by dressing the familiar pop art with a new clothing or emotion.
Kim, Joong sik
ChuGae art institute
the National Art University of France
12 times private exhibition in Japan, China, France, Hong Kong, Seoul and Busan
30 times art fairs such as the Busan Biennale, LA Art Fair, Miami Art Fair, Tokyo Art Fair, KIAF.
2010 circulating exhibitions in Seoul, Japan, U.S.A, Beijing, Australia and France
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