Inseon Kim Director (Space Willing and Dealing)

In 2020, the global calamity of COVID-19 came without notice. The physical distance between people has grown due to fear of the invisible deadly virus, and travel between regions has become difficult because of the strict procedures put in place. The disease has brought about significant changes in the art world. Exhibitions at national and public museums and large-scale international events have been moved online or postponed. Consequently, physical environments for direct sensory experience have contracted rapidly. The reality we are experiencing is on the border between material and immaterial, virtual and real, imagination and reality. In the current climate, an encounter with works by Doohyun Yoon is especially meaningful. In recent years, the artist has worked with particular landscape images found in the realm of pixels. Yoon prints these images on paper, then reprocesses them into flat or three-dimensional physical materials. Following spontaneous inspiration, he turns these materials into a tactile image network that occupies physical space.

Looking at the artist's expressive images spread across a large wall, I thought, oddly, of prehistoric murals. Perhaps, the combinations of basic figures recalling a narrative reminded me of prehistoric images that were painted on irregular surfaces, depicting the silhouette of the quarry. Historically speaking, art was a series of different explorations and experiments aimed at arriving in invisible worlds. In particular, cave paintings, which are commonly introduced on the first page of art history books, are often found with spear marks, indicating that people threw spears at the images as part of pre-hunting training. One can infer that these murals are records of life in caves at the time, and of the people whose lives comprised hunting and war. It feels ironic that Yoon’s colorful and rhythmic images recall cave paintings, because all images used by the artist are derived from scenes created as a collection of pixels on a computer monitor.

〈Mojave day and night series〉. 2019, mixed-material, 8 channel video, no sound, 3.5 x 20 x 1 m.《Young Korean Artists 2019 : Liquid Glass Sea》 (MMCA, Gwacheon, 2019) Exhibition view. Image provided by MMCA Goyang Residency.

This feeling is perhaps related to how I felt when the artist told me that he grew up in a neighborhood near a migratory bird sanctuary in a green belt area in Busan, that it was in the city but away from the center and close to nature. The artist, who is familiar with the online environment and uses bright colors from the cyber world, grew up in a place with a splendid, sparkling view of downtown Busan across the river. The gap between the cityscape on the other side, which remains brightly lit around the clock, and the area surrounded by nature where the young artist lived seems to have significantly influenced the artist's working process. His strictly visual experience from afar manifests in works that reveal the discrepancies in relationships perceived by the body, eyes, and consciousness of the artist occupying real space. This methodology goes back to the three-dimensional sculpture installed on the floor of his solo exhibition in 2018 at the CR Collective. In Sierra, elements of digital images were made into physical objects, and these three-dimensional structures were installed to occupy the entire gallery space. The arrangement covered a rectangular area with a ratio of 16:9. Using elements of digital images and the digital environment, the artist installed a contrasting environment of tactile experiences.

Default background images included in Windows, Mac OS, and other computer operating systems, are a material that Yoon used in recent works including 〈Mojave〉 (2019), 〈Sierra〉 (2018), and 〈Image Wave〉 (2018). In other words, Yoon is using fragments of images that exist as a part of a computer system to build another phenomenal world. These background images often capture spectacular daytime or nighttime scenes from natural landscapes and tourist attractions. These scenes are, in fact, rather unnatural, because most show scenery of some foreign land too far away for us to experience firsthand, and the monitor's illumination makes the colors more stimulating, vibrant, and artificial. The artist converts these scenes into image files, follows inspiration to expand them, prints them onto paper, and processes them physically. They are cut, folded, and rolled up to create three-dimensional forms. These forms are rearranged on the surface of a wall, generating a narrative that follows the artist's consciousness. The stories told by the geometric lines and shapes, which are reminiscent of various objects, are spontaneous and playful. Lines are connected to create a shape, which recalls an object, which in turn causes an event upon other objects and forms. The outcome influences the next image, and the connective sequence continues to form a narrative. This method of working stemmed from Yoon's 2017 project Utopia and Paradise. For this project, Yoon used images that were included in the results of searches for "utopia" and "paradise" on the Internet. This wall installation was later photographed and converted into pixelated images, printed, then framed. This reprocessing realizes the potential of format expansion.

Devoid of the functions once indicated by the flat composition and symbolic markers of cave paintings, the images of the present lack the contemporary context of temporality and are perceived as an instrument of amusement that stimulates the visual sense. This conversion of images that no longer fulfill their original purpose into a medium of playful reflection is not different from the way Yoon dealt with specific environments in his early works.
In his early works, Doohyun Yoon presented environmental errors and discrepancies as measured by existing laws and criteria. In 〈Untitled: Clock (2017, cut-up clock, 40 x 30 cm,)〉, the second hands from two working clocks collide and block each other, causing an error in displaying time. In 〈Samples of Space (2013, thermometer, street-side installation)〉, temperature readings changed according to location within a single space. The artist took photographs after secretly placing a small level on top of paintings by On Kawara and Kazimir Malevich on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to verify that they were not level. An eye for straightness is necessary to hang artwork, but the difference in what the level shows and what the eye sees may be very different. "Errors" found in general knowledge or within a natural phenomenon cause anxiety in people. However, as seen in Yoon's work, when one sees that there is nothing absolute in the world and recognizes that the error does not impact their life significantly, they can relax about their present environment. The "error" can then be converted into an element of wholly enjoyable visual amusement.

〈Mojave day and night series〉, 2019, digital print, 200x54cm, 100x42cm, 200x54cm each. Image provided by MMCA Goyang Residency

Yoon once held an exhibition at an abandoned school, where he turned the entire building in to an exhibit space. He broke fluorescent light bulbs that used to light up the school's interior into fine shards, which he used to draw stars in an installation piece on the floor 〈(Dead Lights, 2015, fluorescent lightbulbs, dimensions variable.)〉. He placed waste materials in corridors and entrances and obstructed movement 〈(Corridor, 2015, wood, dimensions variable〉, / 〈Entrance, 2015, wood, dimensions variable,)〉. In a 2016 project, Yoon removed the original functions of a toilet and sink and used them as part of a structure composed of disparate materials. With an attitude of questioning the existing order and offering different perspectives, Yun adapted the familiar space in its entirety. Viewing the interior of the building as a separate world, Yoon casually overturned the understood roles of objects, structures, and spaces that had functioned within that world. The familiar space was turned into a space not for the user, but for people seeking new experiences.

Human adaptability is amazing, and people are getting used to contactless online social activities. Already, the culture of absorbing the experiences of others and writing about them and responding to them as one’s own experiences is spreading fast and wide on social media. Up to what stage can phenomenological thinking maintain its usefulness? The trend of attempting to gain sensory perception of phenomena that are not experienced firsthand has given rise to a new kind of experience. However, as revealed in Doohyun Yoon's work, virtual reality and indirect experiences ultimately create a phenomenon that leads to the experience of a new environment with physical attributes. After all, the events imagined by the prehistoric humans who painted murals on cave walls, too, became reality.

※ This content was first published in 『2020 MMCA Residency Goyang: A Collection of Critical Reviews』, and re-published here with the consent of MMCA Goyang Residency

Inseon Kim

Director(Space Willing and Dealing)