September in Seoul (Day 5, 2023)

To prepare for another sunny day, I began today’s adventure by securing a UV umbrella from a tourist trap. Although it doesn’t dissipate heat, it did help me avoid the sun! I used Papago (a translation app) to successfully order some dumplings for breakfast, then headed out to Gangnam to visit some galleries.

Lee’s paintings were visceral – in person, the black of the paintings is flat and absolute, no visible marks from its making. The hands and face are hyper-realistic, hairs and blemishes rendered in detail without softening or blurring. In all of the paintings the face and hands are doubled, with the hands either performing the same gesture or in opposition to each other (as seen in Blazing Radiance, below).

Fritsch’s “Hand” was uncanny – the matte black making it difficult to see the details of the hand, while knowing they were there. Initially I thought it was metal, such was the weight and presence given by the black acrylic paint. Having made a series of cast hands in Sculpture I, so many years ago, it reminded me of the pain I experienced dipping my hand into paraffin wax to for plaster casting and wondered: how was this piece cast?

But the art! The exhibition, titled “PANORAMA” featured the work of sixteen contemporary Korean artists in all, “who explore a wide range of themes and media” (from the exhibition website).

In the screening hall, I caught only half of a video by Kwon Hyewon, but it was incredible! The narration described a hypothetical project wherein a unnamed group orchestrated individuals performing dances in urban spaces. Videos of these dancers were then uploaded to Skynet, a drone database, with backdated metadata. This caused drones to identify these dancers as anomalous events in the present, and seek them out – but the drones were unable to find them, because they were from a fabricated present-past. In the end, the drones ultimately reenacted the dances themselves, as each failed, effectively “dying” in the dancer staged locations. The accompanying video was primarily in gray scale, with red subtitles and the sound wasn’t working so I watched it in the silent gallery. It depicted an almost documentary style view of the dancers preparing and performing, contrasted with jerky/frantic perspectives from multiple drones as they sought out the present-past dancers. What a strange, amazing story. I’m definitely going to find out more on her work, the concept and execution blew me away.

There were also several more works by Lee Jinju! In the round series of paintings, hands are shown holding, crushing, separating eggs. I failed to get notes on this series, and there isn’t much information online, but it’s interesting to see a similar technical approach have such a different feel – almost cold, removed? – when the subject shifts in a subtle way. Also shown, was a sculptural painting of a figure, standing about the height of a person. I have no idea what’s happening here, but this work repeated the act of hiding that was in other, similar paintings of anonymous women in strange places trying to hide. I’ll be looking more into Lee’s work!

I timed my return poorly, being literally crushed into subway cars for rush hour, but I did manage to stay awake until it was dark – win!