After an eight-year hiatus, Hong Myung-seop, an established artist recognized for reiecti ng the fixed concepts and values of the art world to mold his own unique artistic boundaries, featured an exhibition titled < Shadowless, Artless, Mindless— Creeping Pieces > at the OCI Museum last winter. In this exhibition, Hong showcased varied layers of artistic expression. The works, including ‘The Way of Existence of Body-Time’, which uses a lenticular method to show the ambivalence of flowers; ‘Running Railroad—Running Sound Road’, which portrays the artists will to express horizontality; and‘Waterproof’, his first ever sound installation work, all took up individual spaces inside the exhibition area. In Art Talk, we look into Hong's world through two different points of view: that of an established critic who has watched Hong's career develop over 20 years, and a young critic who has worked as an art journalist and curator.

Walking into the weightlessness of truth

In the present day, we do not believe there is only one truth. And we do not have a calling to reach that one place, the place that all roads lead to. The pursuit of a singular truth has always led to violence, in which those who did not necessarily belong to the spirit and the physical of that boundary have been excluded by the social system and by those in power. I don't even have to mention Foucault. Although we have witnessed this kind of situation in our lives, we are taken back when there is no mention of the “only truth,” as though this pursuit has been a long-lived habit engraved in us. And we refer to these circumstances, where a singular truth is not mentioned, as indecision and opportunism without being able to hide our discomfort.

Through his work, Hong Myung-seob has responded to this sort of discomfort with his own indisposed take on discomfort, using various sensible tools. His works always maintain a consistent lateral format, and the solid materials used in his three-dimensional works have often been replaced by lightweight ones that are not durable. Also, the way his works occupy the exhibition space and how the viewers interact and take in his works have all metastasized into a multisensory, or synesthetic, form. This, of course, is not limited to formal things. The content inside the works also cannot be defined in one way, and they stubbornly refuse to be comprehended by the limits of artistic language or a “code.” This is similar to Ranciere's stance on democratic, political, and aesthetic preconditions in the art world, which has generated a lot of interest in the art world over the last few years. As such, Hong Myung-seob's works are there to overturn the existing trends as well as to allow a number of truths to coexist.

And looking at the big picture, it seems that the points he wants to get across in this exhibition lies somewhere in this basis. The unique thing is that one can only properly experience the works in this exhibition through hybridized senses that have crossbred by various means. And this hybridization is left completely to the freedom of the viewers. The viewers have to be willing to move their bodies, wear heavy shoes, and walk through dark spaces. And coincidentally, this seems to boil down to the act of walking, an act which mammals, after starting to walk erect, designated for a certain part of the body, the feet. In fact, I recall noticing that Hong Myung-seob, in his past works, has put a special emphasis on feet. As such, when an artist asks his viewers to engage in a certain act, especially in taking on a new, synesthetic state by mixing their senses?such as walking?it might be a carefully calculated move by the artist to do so. And if we consider the fact that all the works in the exhibition area are the fruit of the artist's spiritual and physical labor, isn't it only fair that the viewers go through some troublesome labor so as to not alienate the artist or themselves (the producer and the participants) from the works?

When you first walk onto the first floor of the exhibition hall, the work ‘Ringwanderung’ is what catches your eye. Lenticular lenses are used when realizing a three-dimensional or simple image on a flat surface, a material used to give us various visual experiences by making the object birefringent, much like how an insect looks at the world around it. Of course, many photographers have used this technique. The lenticular work Hong Myung-seob incorporates in ‘Ringwanderung’ makes use of the title, in that the work refers to the perception of walking straight through darkness and bad weather when you are in reality just walking around in circles. It is like when insects, with their various ways of looking at plants, encounter different characteristics of flowers and come to realize that the characteristics observed through just one point of view do not equal the actual object. The process of going through various kinds of visual chaos before finally meeting the flower again on the plane is similar to what Hong’s work portrays. However, the object that the insect encounters after various kinds of visual chaos carries a very different meaning compared to the object in its original state. This is because it breaks away from being an aesthetic object acquired from the very human point of view to becoming a threatening object to us with the venom it carries inside, thereby expanding its ontological meaning. However, this threat is also a welcome one that is no different from being an aesthetic object, in which, what greets us in the end is emptiness and despondence.

In the past, Hong Myung-seob used ephemeral and lightweight concepts instead of durability to present ‘Foot. In Running Railroad/Slipper Road’, Hong showcases a road without purpose, where one needs to be equipped with a new tool that protects and at the same time presses down upon the foot in order to walk on. His work with feet appeared at a time when Hong was rejecting the characteristics of past three-dimensional works which needed to have a durable, firm element to them. However, in this work, he is once again rejecting feet as the object as well as weightlessness as an attribute. He wants to overturn not only the fixed perceptions and concepts of the past but also of his past works. The new tool he uses collides with his past work, ‘Running Railroad’, and creates a sort of friction, as if it is going through a dialectical process. Of course, the sum of what has been made up until now carries with it the possibility of being rejected through his future works.

The extension of the senses that can interpret a work of art, which was made possible by opening the door to the possibility of new senses and, ultimately, escaping from having divided senses, is the newly attained political role of art that Ranciere talks about. This also opens the door for contemporary artwork to contribute to the world. In ‘Waterproof’, we can use senses other than sight, which often represents truth and reality in our world. Of course, it is a bit banal to attribute a new meaning to experiencing other senses besides sight. This is because we have tried hard to escape from the very primitive concept of thinking that says we must appreciate visual artwork through sight, having rebuffed the multi-view method that resulted from rejecting the perspective. So when viewing Hong Myung-seob's ‘Waterproof’, it seems right to talk about a new sensuous shock instead of a simple metastasis of the senses. And this sort of mechanism of the shock is partly similar but also contradictory to that of ‘Running Railroad/Slipper Road’. As we walk through the dark room, we learn of the buoyant lightness of being through auditory stimulation instead of through gravity. In a sense, can we not look at this as a space of weightlessness, where we can escape from the weight that is attributed to various truths? In the end, this space is where nothingness and plentifulness meet, where freedom is an obligation. This doesn't seem too far off from the message that Hong Myung-seob wants to get across through this exhibition.

Hong Myung-seop, Shadowless, Artless, Mindless - Creeping Pieces
Revolt of the Senses: Heading Your Way, Set to the Rhythm of My Body _ Lee Seulbi (Writer for [Monthly Art])
Sculpture, as a way of dissipation and impermanence _ Park Young Taek(Professor at Kyonggi University, Art Critic)