1. The aesthetics of reduction

 The title “Minus” has a special meaning. One expresses the artists' will to move from abstract space to absolute space. Second, it reflects the author's intention to move from the aesthetic realm to the moral realm. Third, it refers to the author's insight into examining the fundamental differences between Western culture, such as Indo-German languages, and East Asian culture.
 In the Digesta compiled by Emperor Justinian the Great (482-565), the phrase “Truth appears toward the light (Veritas in lucem emergit.)” appears. And the adage “Truth does not run away from the light (Veritas lucem non refugit.)” has also been passed down for a long time. And we ask the question of Pontius Pilatus (r. 26-36), who condemned Jesus Christ to crucifixion, “What is truth? (Quid est veritas?)” I also remember the sentence. Jesus Christ says:

 In the Santaekson trigram (山澤損卦), the mountain (山) can be said to be the external form of rites and evil in all human affairs. The nail [澤] symbolized by Tae (兌) can be said to be internal. It is a teaching that if we empty out the inner self again and again, the external world of humans can rise taller. Removing the inner self is the avoidance of secrecy and the realization of human greed, and because of this, the law of heaven is restored only when everything moves toward fairness. What is Cheonli? It refers to the restoration of human nature. What is nature? It is nothing but goodness. In East Asian thought, goodness is the principle that operates the universe and the most fundamental first principle instilled within us. The principle by which the universe gives birth and nurtures all things [天地生物之心] is based on goodness, and the reason humans live is also in the realization of goodness. Accordingly, Go Ban-ryong (高攀龍, 1562-1626), a thinker of the late Ming Dynasty, says:

 Go Ban-ryong says that if you remove all the prejudices formed by customs, knowledge, and experience, and the accumulation of information accumulated through knowledge, you will recover the original nature that was given to you at birth. East Asian art pursues inward retreat rather than outward expansion. That immersion is not aimed at the ecstasy of vanity. It is the will to return to the original nature by reducing and reducing. It refers to the deepening process of the mind that seeks to arise from the flesh of passion and the bones of will.

2. The process toward sincerity (bona fide)

 As mentioned earlier, the purpose of this exhibition “Minus” is to explore the world of artists seeking new artistic paths. Transcendence and intoxication are the two major mountains of Western aesthetics. In contrast, East Asian aesthetics originates from the landscape. Uigyeong (意境) is a world of new dimensions of meaning and form created when the artist's subjective thoughts and emotions meet and fuse with objective objects or objects. The author's subjective thoughts are dramatized to the maximum in his original experience. The original acquisition comes from the eternal process of letting go. Therefore, East Asian art is the art of meaning.
 Three artists participate in ｢Minus｣. They are Lee Chang-hoon (李昌訓, 1971-), Han Ji-seok (韓知錫, 1971-), and Park In-seong (朴寅成, 1985-). These three artists are all pursuing the art of meaning and taking the yi jing, thereby opening up a new vein to the foundation of modern art while maintaining East Asian traditional thinking. At the same time, we make endless efforts to strengthen the foundation. Lee Chang-hoon worked in Stuttgart, Germany, and set foot in Korea in 2009. The artist's experimental spirit is known both at home and abroad, and he confirms the truth of an unpredictable world through the methodology of art. Ji-Seok Han has been traveling between the UK and Korea, trying to find a new direction in the world of painting, and has recently been exploring a new realm of profound blue painting. Park In-seong returned to Korea after working in Nuremberg, Germany and is exploring the boundaries between painting and photography. Although he is immersed in the world of painting, he uses analog film as his main material. If the essence of painting lies in flatness, the essence of photography is the film itself. The artist even exposes the perforation hole and photo identification number, exploring new possibilities in painting with the concept of photography as essentialism.
 Lee Chang-hoon exhibits two important series of works in this ｢Minus｣. One is the “Han River” series. The author has dramatically expressed the meaning of space and time and agnosticism about it through the 2020 “Tail” series. This involves installing dehumidifiers in three different spaces, collecting water vapor, freezing it, and then thawing it again in the exhibition space. A space is not just a physical space. When scientifically measured, a space becomes an objective world. Heidegger (Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976) refers to this as an ontotic view. However, existential perspective is an objective world that is physical, measured, and understood in quantities. A space cannot be math or science. All cultural contexts are intricately intertwined. The space of life is a poetic space. It is a small universe where people's memories and forgetfulness, the good and evil of taste, and the warmth of life are mixed together. Heidegger refers to this will to understand the world as ontological view.
 The reason artist Lee Chang-hoon collected water vapor from three different spaces was to visualize an ontological perspective. This is because it was the air and the water vapor in the air that breathed with the overall atmosphere that accompanied the continuous process of life. That vapor is the hidden truth. It symbolizes the ontological context of three different spaces. Along with the author's intention, we imagine all the cultural contexts that took place in the three spaces. The author refers to that context as the ‘tail.’ All ontological contexts liquefy from steam to water, freeze into a solid, and then liquefy back into water and eventually vaporize into another space. It is returned to negative territory.
 The “Han River” series is the artist’s first new work. ｢Hangang｣ has a similar work process to ｢Tail｣. The artist casts the object of appreciation, a stone, in plaster. Collected water from the Han River is frozen in a mold cast in the shape of stone. (The water of the Han River embraces the desires and dust of life of all Seoulites.) The water of the Han River is transformed into the shape of Seok. The artist takes pictures of the moment when the water in the Han River melts in the shape of a stone. As an aesthetic object of appreciation, the freezing of the stone and the remnants of all kinds of desires cannot last forever and disappear. Our brain (mind) cannot remember desires. It disappears with a momentary sensation. Our brain (mind) cannot remember lies. I only remember the truth. Author Lee Chang-hoon exquisitely shows the existential truth of humans through a profound process.
 Although more than 20 years have passed since Lee Chang-hoon received attention in the Korean art world, the work that people unanimously like is “1Frame.” One movie is made up of 29 frames of images per second. Considering the running time is 1 hour and 30 minutes, it is calculated as 156,600 frames. The artist combines all these frames and reduces them to one frame. All of the colorful images of over 10,000 frames transform into a non-image screen reminiscent of an abstract painting. Even abstract painting is reminiscent of the sublime paintings of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). In fact, Lee Chang-hoon nullifies the story in the film with a non-image, while visualizing the paradoxical truth that absolute nothingness is actually perfect fullness.
 Ji-Seok Han first presented the painting Abyss Bluer than the Sea around 2013. The artist's paintings are done in blue. The English word ‘blues’ not only refers to a genre of music, but has also been used as a word for depression since the 18th century. The etymology is ‘blue devils,’ which means ‘depression’ or ‘delirium tremens.’ The dictionary definition of delirium is “a condition in which consciousness about the outside world is clouded, causing illusions and delusions, speaking nonsense, talking in one’s sleep, or speaking incomprehensibly, being extremely excited and anxious, or suffering from grief or distress.” A disorder of consciousness that sometimes causes paralysis” 5)
refers to Paintings with blue tones often symbolize noble spirituality. It is a concept that contrasts with the state of detachment from the world or the earthly world, and also symbolizes the eternity of the heavenly world.
 Ji-Seok Han's paintings are surprisingly related to the photos and information that appear in newspaper articles. The use of newspaper articles as subject matter for paintings has existed before. For example, there is Marlene Dumas (1953-). Marlene Dumas uses newspaper articles as references for her work. Representative works include “The Woman of Algiers” (2001), which deals with the colonial war of independence, and “The Widow” (2013), which deals with the political assassination of a woman. It is well known that the “Sillikat” series published by Gerhard Richter (1932-) in 2003 was extracted from the content and images of articles in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Surprisingly, many of Han Ji-seok's paintings also borrow parts from photographs in newspaper articles. Dumas pointed out the oscillation between memory and forgetfulness of absurd reality, and Richter noted that facts can become ideas. Ji-Seok Han points out the unacceptability of information.

 Information is divided into two types. One is truly important information [informative]. The other is information [abundant] that flows and overflows and flows out of consciousness and goes away. We don't remember the newspaper article exactly. This is because the information we receive every day is accumulated, and the accumulated information overflows from our minds and passes away. It is information that is consumed. Information consumed leaks out of the brain and flows into the drain of the unconscious. We remember (judge) certain events by adding, subtracting, and editing blurry images and abstract concepts. Conversely, valuable information, such as scriptures, is not remembered or judged, but rather penetrates the heart and is directly imprinted on the body and mind (informative).
 Ji-seok Han transforms all the thoughts we remember, judge, forget and misunderstand into a pictorial performance called blues. It lies on the border between abstraction and representation, and requires penetrating both factual judgments and value judgments. Writer Han Ji-seok is reducing all the information in the world (all the events in the world) and elevating it to the most depressing yet noble scene.
 Inseong Park began his art with the question of what the essence of art is. Humans start art from the fourth dimension. The 4th dimension (reality) is the 3rd dimension (space) plus the 1st dimension (time). Fourth-dimensional art is a ritual. The ceremony consists of dance, song, and performance. A ritual is an act of wishing for something. The hope at this time is collective. In order to achieve personal wishes, people created three-dimensional sculptures or sculptures. Advances in technology have made two-dimensional drawings possible.
 People originally lived without letters. Life was full of wonders. When I started drawing and sculpting things, my life turned into magic. People have become unable to distinguish between life and magic. To criticize this state of affairs, he developed letters (characters). Letters are one-dimensional and linear. It formed logical precedence and time consciousness (recording). (Historical consciousness was formed.) Historical consciousness is reason, and reason develops into equations and becomes the basis of science and technology. Science and technology lead to the invention of the camera. Cameras develop digital images. Digital images are a binary world of 0 and 1, a world of zero-dimensional points. And photos and digital images are magic (two-dimensional images) created by reason (one-dimensional). Originally, reason and magic had a conflicting relationship, but in the 20th century, it degenerated into a relationship of strange harmony. In this strange relationship, we are sucked into a state of absurdity that is neither rational nor magic. All life and values ​​are caught up in photographic images. Our lives become photographs, and our value also comes from photographs.
 Park In-seong finds that our contemporary lives are fundamentally different from those of ancient people in our domination by photographic images. The essence of a photographic image is the camera film itself. The artist even exposes the film's perforation and unique number in his work. Leaving drawing gestures and traces on the film itself, alluding to parts of the human body, or arranging abstract images is to describe in the work the perspective on the human world that has changed over time (history). Artist Park In-seong uses the film itself as a reference to reveal the essence of contemporary people who think in zero dimensions. As an essentialist viewpoint, it is a very beautiful concept, and at the same time, it is also a metaphor criticizing the exclusive essentialism of past modernism.
 The three artists, Lee Chang-hoon, Han Ji-seok, and Park In-seong, return to themselves from events and aspects of the outside world and create works of art in a new form that has never been seen before. Insightful internal thoughts from the ever-changing and unpredictable events of reality are sublimated into artistic form. The artist's world unfolds in an eternal process toward sincerity, and that sincerity refers to the belief that society, history, art, and self are one. The will to reduce it all to one requires courage. These writers are never afraid of the arduous process.

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