Magazine Art | Kim Hyun Jung Solo Exhibition ‘2014 Naesoong Olympics’
A feature on Kim Hyun Jung's solo exhibition in the "Preview Exhibition" section of Magazine Art's June 2014 issue (No. 110), written by reporter Park Il-gyu. The exhibition was held June 18 (Wed) – July 1 (Tue), 2014, at the main hall, 1st floor of Insa Art Center, and the article featured five works from the 'Naesoong Olympics' series on the theme of the Olympics and sport — 'Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed,' 'The Marathoner,' 'Lifting Myself,' 'A Devoted Woman,' and 'A Perfect Table' — together with an interview with the artist.
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"To stay in the same place, you must keep running."
Often called the Red Queen Effect, this is the line the Red Queen says to Alice in Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking-Glass.'
Because the world around us keeps moving as we move ourselves, we want to get ahead of others — or, failing that, we must keep running just to maintain the status quo. This line represents, regardless of era, the figure of the 'contemporary person' of the time.
Living intensely amid competition as if fighting a war, people's days bear, like lifting a barbell, the weight of the self alongside the 'responsibility' and 'pressure' of society.
One of the works in painter Kim Hyun Jung's <Story of Naesoong> series, which wittily unpacks the process by which the gaze of others comes to be internalized by the self, this solo exhibition's theme is 'Naesoong Olympics.'
Contemporary people 'exercise' within society, amid one another's gazes, to relieve that stress and to release emotions they usually keep suppressed.
The sight of people exercising in their daily lives may reflect the intensity with which contemporary people live, or it may equally be seen as a way of releasing that weight.
Kim Hyun Jung says that, since last autumn, she has been capturing fragments of that emotion and contemplation at a 'neighborhood park' (a citizens' park located in Yangjae, Seoul) and putting them onto canvas. The artist, aiming for the liberation of a self bound by 'our self-portrait, shackled to the gaze of others,' said that 'through the process of working, I received comfort and consolation.' Where her works up to now have captured 'the worries of youth,' this exhibition, 'Naesoong Olympics,' captures fragments of feeling sensed at the neighborhood park — a space of liberation for 'ajumma' and 'ajeossi' (middle-aged women and men). Such concerns are directly expressed in 'Lifting Myself,' where stepping into society and the responsibility of adulthood, together with one's own growth, feel like lifting the very weight of time. And even as every form of exercise depicted is something anyone can easily do in daily life, by calling it an 'Olympics,' the work also subtly conveys the intensity found within both society and the everyday.
The world keeps changing and moving, and so people must always keep running so as not to be left behind. But the artist says she does not want to depict the negative side of contemporary people living so intensely, but rather to relieve their weight and stress.
Whether good or bad, emotions carry energy, and they transfer to and influence people. Through this exhibition, one hopes visitors will find, in exercise, a source of vitality and a moment of ease amid their exhausted daily lives.
_ Reporter Park Il-gyu
[Works featured: Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed (187×111cm) / The Marathoner (200×121cm) / Lifting Myself (124×183cm) / A Devoted Woman (112×134cm) / A Perfect Table (130×162cm), all collage on hanji, 2014]