Unswallowable
2016
Installation view
DOOSAN Gallery Seoul is pleased to announce Doosan Humanities Theater* exhibition, Unswallowable from April 13 to May 21, 2016.
Doosan Humanities Theater is a site of exchange for scientific, artistic and multidisciplinary exploration into human and nature. The theme for this year is New Imagination on the Extended Territory.
Various forms of ‘adventure’ mark each age, in various levels from the personal to national. Making different choices and bearing risky consequences, an individual takes leaps of adventure and feels a sense of fulfillment. Each in his or her adventure, individuals come together to form a collective where the society as a whole undertakes various ‘adventures’ in accordance with its desires and reality.
Artists don’t just simply reflect reality; they propose a new vision or ways of foreseeing the future. Thus people are able to experience, albeit vaguely, the middle point between reality and fantasy/future through artists. Unlike in the past when there was quite a rupture between reality and fantasy, we see many things unimaginable in the past being realized in the present. Now, the present might be too close to the future, and we’re running out of time in creating new futures and other fantasies. In time and age where we no longer know what to dream, what leaps of adventure is the individual or the society taking?
This exhibition offers the opportunity to see how artists recognize reality as an individual, and how they are able to capture the universal human adventure through their works that reflect each of the artists’ own adventures in this society.
Limbai-jihee traces images of her own memories and sub-consciousness. Although her paintings might seem like expressions of her personal thoughts and ideas, they are actually a cross section of the society she has experienced. By pinning down fleeting images onto the surface of the painting, the artist works out the pain, sorrow and alienation she has experienced. Gwangsoo Park’s paintings are usually rendered in pen, ink or black acrylic paint. Although the forest which repeatedly appears in his paintings seems familiar, for the artist, it’s an unpredictable space of mixed dreams and reality where primitive life forms squirm. Every day, Park takes seemingly-tranquil but dynamic adventures in reality and in his paintings. Hyein Lee portrays her memories and experiences of space. In the last few years, Lee has been working outside of her studio in outdoor spaces where the conditions are beyond her control. Through these works, Lee casts fundamental questions on identity and painting. In the video work The Emotional Society on Stage by Hye Jeong Cho & Sook Hyun Kim, the dancers metaphorically portray the ways in which people of various occupations in Korea arrive at their own balance in life.
*Doosan Humanities Theater Series
Doosan Humanities Theater Series is an intersecting site of scientific, humanistic and artistic imagination and discourses on mankind and nature. Starting with Big History: From Big Bang to Big Data in 2013 and followed by The Age of Distrust in 2014 and Exception, Mutation, or Abnormality on the Borders in 2015, New Imagination on the Extended Territory is the theme for this year’s Doosan Humanities Theater in 2016. For three months from March to June, scholars in different academic fields including sociology and humanities will be invited to present lectures, performances, film screenings and an exhibition associated with the subject.
New Imagination on the Extended Territory
Adventure is frightening. Most journeys into the sea have been taken along the coast where the shoreline is visible, because venturing out into the nothingness of the ocean is terrifying. However, some headed out into the unknown, and what they discovered changed the world. A lot still lies ahead of mankind and their intellectual achievements. There may await destructive process and sufferings that accompany adventure; despite so, adventure still excites us because it’s becoming ever more evident that not taking leaps inevitably confines us in reality. Based on endless human adventure and experiences in the process, we hope to find the key to break through this reality.