A combination of fantasy and reality
Lee Ji-in | Curator
The dictionary definition of ‘fantasy’ is ‘a vain thought or fantasy without realistic foundation or possibility.’ This takes only the real world as a reference point and defines any invisible mental activity of an individual and itself as something that cannot be realized in reality. Slavoj Zizek says that, contrary to these limitations of definition, fantasy constitutes our desires and provides their coordinates. 1)
What he is saying is that fantasy serves as a guide to how we desire. Fantasy can be said to be a subject's subjective and active interpretation of the real or identifiable physical world and an invisible product derived from an image of desire drawn in the person's mind. In addition, fantasy is the power of an individual's desire to impose a new order on the current world, and for him, it is the driving force that creates another visible or invisible world that overwhelms the real world, and is our reality. It is a kind of composition that is randomly mixed with. Zizek also points out the unclear distinction between fantasy and reality and says that we are in a state of perversion or confusion between reality and fantasy, and that our phenomenal world is in fact nothing more than a shell of fantasy with reality. According to him, we are ‘blind beings’ who are trapped in virtuality and cannot see reality.
Then, what is reality, and what is the illusion or illusion that makes it unclear or doubtful? Park In-seong's work starts from this question, and the process of various attempts to find his own answer to that question is captured in one screen. The artist treats film, photography, and documentary themselves as the subject matter and material of the work, and raises questions arising from the discrepancy between the visible and the invisible and the reality of the object revealed in the act of recording or the process of recording on the screen. Move it. His method of producing work, which actively operates analog and digital media and twists and overturns the everyday usage of commonly used media, explores the doubts about the uniqueness or uniqueness raised by works of art or recording media and the objectivity of their essential functions. It is a kind of experiment and a record of it. The artist uses his work itself as a metaphor that shakes the foundation of the definition and function of records and documentaries.
You are in the fantasy.
Even if everything is falling apart now
You are still there in the fantasy.
He says the way he looks now is not real.
-Seo Taiji and Boys, from ‘You in Fantasy’
Even if everything is falling apart now
You are still there in the fantasy.
He says the way he looks now is not real.
-Seo Taiji and Boys, from ‘You in Fantasy’
This exhibition, ‘You in Fantasy’, borrows the title of a popular song that dominated an era. This is similar to Park In-sung's work in that it dismantles the existing codes we are familiar with and shows an unfamiliar world with new forms and sensibilities. Like the lyrics, ‘Even if everything is falling apart, you are still there in the fantasy,’ Park In-seong’s hazy and ambiguous screen allows the audience to focus on the reality beyond the indiscernible objects and images, and to see one’s own appearance standing alone within it. Let us gain insight into its essence. The world that originates from the fantasy of a painter or writer who pursues ‘reality’ more than anything else can only exist through the power of fantasy, which is more carefully structured than reality, and at the same time, the power of reality that pierces that fantasy once again is layered together.
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1) Slavoj Žižek, 『Fantastical Illness』, Jong-ju Kim, Human Love, 2002.