Jinmyeong Lee, art criticism

 The main works in this exhibition “Hidden Surface” are stories about art through film. In the West, art was a medium that had to prioritize beauty. This basic premise has been maintained for a long time. Kalokagathia is a mysterious idea in which truth, goodness, and beauty are all mixed together. It is a compound word of kallos, meaning beauty, and agathos, meaning goodness. It refers to a state in which physical, moral, and mental virtues (arete) are appropriately harmonized. The history of Western art shows the process of elements gradually becoming isolated from Kalokagatia. Art, in which refined and beautiful stories were unfolded with amazing skill and imagination, gradually began to distance itself from the dual values ​​of beauty, good and evil, good and bad, honor and glory, and wealth. Finally, attention began to be paid to the media itself. There are some who praise art games that question the nature of the medium as philosophizing art, but they should not overlap with the content and form that pre-existing artists of previous eras preferred, and should develop and present a new agenda. Creating art becomes more and more difficult. (Entropy has increased too much.)

 In the case of East Asia, even though we accepted modernism, we did not abandon traditional aesthetics, but rather incorporated them into the space of modernism. If we were to put our modernism in one word, it is the art of process. Process does not mean the order or procedure of creation. Rather, it means the accumulation of time. Breathing, discipline, and spirituality become one in the extremely beautiful poetic time created by the moment of brush strokes [master and medium (material)]. Our traditional ideology that made this re-creation possible is the theory of Mun-i-jaedo (文以載道論). This means that when writing a sentence, you must include the principle. Gorgeous and beautiful writing is meaningless in our tradition. Because the principle is missing. On the other hand, if there is a reason, even if the sentence is concise, it is welcomed. However, this writing does not simply mean writing. Mun (文) means art, and furthermore, refers to the overall culture, which is explained by rites and music. So what is doctrine? It is the duty to throw away empty talk, “discipline oneself by facing the facts[實事自律]” and “achieve benevolence without ceasing only through earthly efforts[唯自强不息, 以成其仁]”. . Therefore, in our tradition, literature (art) is a system of thought that closely examines not only the rites and music form, which refers to the relationship between people, but also the relationship between people and nature (gods).

 The Western tradition pushes the essence of media (material) to the extreme, while the East Asian tradition persistently enforces the process of thinking (spirit). I believe that meaningful art can be created simply by finding an appropriate balance between the two. Author Park In-seong has been pondering the issue of appropriate neutrality and harmony between the two. His insight stems from the question of how the human problem of propriety and evil can be incorporated into the essentialist view of art (Western) that seeks the most minimal medium (material) while the unfinished project of modernism is still in progress. Park In-seong’s insight is as follows. Painting evolved from Kalokagatia to modernism, which questioned the nature of the medium. It is wrong to deny the truth of this history. When this truth is denied, only two forms emerge. One is sensationalism and the other is misuse of spectacle. Artist Park In-seong's main agenda was to find a new breakthrough without going against the flow of history as much as possible.

 Artist Park In-seong believes that art is a type of communication. Pictures are communication, and poetry is also communication. Photos are also for communication. However, this communication is limited. Art cannot contain all stories. Therefore, it is a symbolic form. Communication in symbolic form is impossible without poetic spirit. Author Park In-seong focuses on German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998). According to Niklas Luhmann, the characteristic of communication lies in selection. And selection is contingent because it can be done differently. It is probabilistic. And it's optional. In other words, you can choose every possible thing, but you cannot choose everything. Because humans cannot do everything at the same time. Therefore, communication is basically selective. And all participants in communication cannot escape the shackles of selection. Considering that art is also communication, it is selective. The more a painting or photograph tries to contain, the more the aura is lost (cooling down). When a painting or photograph contains only the minimum amount of content, the subtle effects of the aura become hotter, but communication becomes ambiguous, like a symbol. Artist Park In-seong believes that the unbridgeable abyss between the two can be dramatically filled by forming poetic meaning by reconstructing the film on the screen without processing it as much as possible. Therefore, the goal of “Hidden Surface” is to build a symbolic language with a screen without externality.

 That is why the world of artist Park In-seong is both avant-garde and consilient. First, he wants to create paintings without brushness. Second, it seeks to overcome modernism without the later aspects that are the opposite of modernism, that is, sensationalism or spectacle. Third, he sought to integrate the East Asian concept of literature into the essentialism of modernism. The essence of photography is to reproduce phenomena. Photography cannot overcome the fate of externality. The essence of painting was also reproduction. Painting settled into modernism while exploring the medium itself. Inseong Park asks the following questions. Doesn’t the essence of photography lie in the film itself? If a film is fixed to a canvas or frame with the intention of composition and arrangement, is it a painting or a photograph? Is it filmy-painting or painterly film? Artist Park In-seong asks these fundamental questions and replaces the cloak of two-dimensional art with a new one. Therefore, although the shape is obscured in “Hidden Surface,” countless new possibilities for discourse emerge.