Off Kilter: Notes from a Study of Contemporary Korean Artists
A r t | 2008/01/25 06:40
Lim Geun-jun, trans. Iris Moon, [Off Kilter: Notes from a Study of Contemporary Korean Artists], Seoul: Specter Press, 2007
Copyright © Lim Geun-jun, 2007
Translated from Korean by Iris Moon
Proofreading and copy-editing by JK and Min Choi
Coordinated by Jae Seok Kim
Designed by Sulki & Min Choi
Published by Specter Press, Yongin
www.specterpress.com
The publication of this book has been made possible
by the support of the Arts Council Korea
Printed and bound in Korea by AP Korea
isbn 978-89-93061-00-0
_ Preface
The present volume is an ‘extract’ of a more extensive work, originally
written and published in Korean as Crazy Art, Made in Korea, in
the winter of 2006. The Korean publication featured the entirety of
the twenty-one encounters I had made as part of my personal investigation
into contemporary Korean artists: Chung Suejin, MeeNa
Park, Kim Doojin, Nakhee Sung, Lee Dongi, Yoon-Young Park, Yoo
Seung-ho, Choi Jeong-hwa, Lee Sookyung, Jo Seub, Park Chankyung,
Koh Seung-wook, Sora Kim & Gimhongsok, Lee Bul, Osang Gwon,
Sulki & Min, Hyungkoo Lee, Kim Sanggil, Choi Byoungil, Sasa [44],
and Jackson Hong. This English version will start off with six of those
encounters. Please think of this work as an informal greeting.
Although contemporary art in the Republic of Korea (like that of
other countries) is mostly trash, every now and then one comes
across something captivating. For a country with a post-colonial
experience, the history of modern art in Korea is relatively expansive
and its art movements are quite diverse. Despite this, however, an
artistic contemporaneity had not yet really emerged: not, at least,
until the mid-1990s. As an art lover, I became fascinated by the unfolding
of the new visual/non-visual contemporaneity. By researching the
major contemporary artists of the moment, I wanted, as both an art
writer and artist who writes, to document and give proof that such a
contemporaneity existed in Korea, despite the continuous threat of
disappearing into an art that must bow to ‘white taste’ and turn into a
hopelessly tacky ‘Third World art’. The first question I asked was
simple: ‘What kind of contemporary art is currently being made in
Korea?’ Asking the question was easy; preparing the answer was a
long and arduous journey. Before beginning my investigation in January
2004, I set down a number of general rules. First: to choose one artist
(or a collaborative team) every month and explore their processes
and work. Second: to choose artists who could be set within the
(global) artistic ‘timeline’, and who successfully asked and operated
within questions relevant to contemporary art. Third: to create an
archive of all the available materials on the artists. Fourth: to compose
my writing as if I were telling a story to you, in person. Fifth: to pursue
the shared paths that arose in each story, in order to weave them
together into a larger narrative – a narrative about the art of our time.
Some of the artists I met presented a world resembling an
asphyxiating jungle, while others’ felt like a desert where everything
collapsed from heat exhaustion. One felt like an electronics factory
where the machinery continually repeated and revolved, while
another struck me like a haunted house at an amusement park.
While all of the journeys were fun and engaging, none of them followed
exactly the same itinerary. Nor did they allow my role any
consistency. I would enter some of these artistic worlds as an
anthropologist, while others would compel me to engage with all the
riotous passions of a very biased art lover. Still other moments would
have me adopt the stance of a suspicious investigative reporter.
Sensitive readers will be able to discern a stinging level of engagement
at various moments in the narratives. However, the stories in
my investigative journey of Korean contemporary art should not
force your brain to recoil in pain. I only hope you enjoy each text as a
pleasurable mental exercise. So you should just sit back and relax like
King Shahryar in The Thousand and One Nights and all this book
should do is take the role of Scheherazade weaving her tales every
night – but just for six nights. And that should be it. As a reinvented
criticism to fit today’s postmedium condition, my criticism is no
different than a collection of tales that, by exploring an interdependent
relationship with artist and work as subject matter, hopes for an
independent life.
OffKilter_Table_of_Contents___Preface.pdf
