My work begins with the subject who can no longer challenge the reality of post-capitalism.
I make a hole in ideologies, and contradict concepts like reason and violence, logic and leaps of
logic, grief and cheerfulness, producing ironic subjects at each clash-point. What I create through
delight, provocation, and imagination is not a comfortable utopia but a barrenness inspiring
new subjects and communities.
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| (left)Container Series-newlywed Digital Light-Jet print, 97×127cm 2010 (right)Container Series-friendship Digital Light-Jet print, 97×127cm 2010 |
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| Container Series-Candlelight Digital Light-Jet print, 97X127cm 2009 |
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| Container Series-Gap-Dol and Gap-Sun Digital Light-Jet print, 97X127cm 2009 |
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| Container series-Hamjinaebi Digital Light-Jet print, 97X127cm 2009 |
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| Container series-Ttabong Digital Light-Jet print, 97X127cm 2009 |
JoSeub’s Art: Delightful or Inconvenient
Lee Dae-bum, Art Critic
In contemporary Korean history, Korea as ‘an uncompleted modern country’ had to face barbarous violence.
The stronger it resisted against power, the cleverer its savagery and violence became, further underlining its rationality. In Korean society, social justice, individual personality, and human rights were therefore frustrated by power. Many people tend to remain insensible to its irrationality as this situation has continued, and settle within it.
JoSeub resists against all we accept as truth uncritically, making his voices through his body. JoSeub’s artistic attitude sees our faith system and the fact that we embrace as formed by members of society out of need. By twisting and criticizing the system, JoSeub focuses on interpreting it from the present perspective, unveiling the logic of need. Some critics believe through a parody provoked by kitschy sensibility, he reveals the apolitical characteristic of his generation. However, this evaluation is a result of their misunderstanding caused by lack of analysis.
JoSeub who has tarnished the institutional, social truth of contemporary Korean history notes microscopic daily violence unseen in the midst of large scale visible violence. The <No Title> series (2002~2004) is the story of the trivial violence we meet in our daily lives. <No Title 01>(2002)
portrays one of a party drinking beer who strikes another man down with a beer bottle ‘without any specific reason’. What’s significant here is the other members’ reaction. They become accomplices, doing nothing about the violent attack. A violent scene is also depicted in <No Title 03> (2003) featuring people enjoying drinking by the riverside of the Han River. As in No Title, a violent event takes place ‘without any specific reason’. The surrounding people imitate this violence ‘without any reason’. The victim just represses his anger toward the violence. It seems there is no action he can take. <No Title 01> accounts for why the violence was committed. The victim asks a passerby for help, but is more severely beaten because he got his running shoes dirty. In the No Title series, the reasons for violence are trivial. It doesn’t matter how much one suffers from the violence even though the suffering is unimaginable.
Revealing the indifference to violence in daily life, JoSeub sheds light on the violence in contemporary Korean history. In his early work JoSeub abstractly or explicitly criticized historical spaces and objects, while he approached concrete historical incidents during the period from 2002
when he released Do Bring Seub Back (2002)until 2005 when he had his Alternative Space Pool solo show Do not Question. The methodology of burlesquing and mocking idolized icons was maintained in this exhibition, but this was not his final objective. JoSeub brings history to the present time, but delays his personal evaluation of each historical event. Instead, he draws out the common memories society has institutionalized. Although JoSeub reproduces well-known news photographs and reenacts historical events everyone knows, he identifies his work’s visual appearance by printing them in the same size, putting them into the same frame, and hanging them on the same level. While he performed only a victim in the No Title series, he represents both the victim and the assailant in this reproduction of news photos. That is to say, all are victims and assailants as well. Through ‘becoming’ Douglas MacArthur, Park Chung-hee, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Deuk-gu, Im Chun-ae, Park Jong-cheol, and common Gwangju citizens, he compares and researches them from the present point of view, departing from common institutionalized historical memories forced on us by news photos (or its methodology).
Works displayed at his 2008 Gallery 2 solo show Who Wants to Live Forever seem considerably different from his previous pieces. As Jeong Yong-do pointed out in its catalog essay, “incidents as photographic records, photographs as the records of actions, present reinterpretation of specific space and time, and the images’ atmosphere governed by dismay” suggest these works are in the same context with his previous pieces. The only change is the focus of these works moves to the world of religion and myth. However, this is also an element for which ‘the logic of necessity’ he has put focus on operates. The answer JoSeub accepts for the question “Who wants to live Forever” is religion and myth. They are insubstantial yet exist. Religions and myths are formed through an agreement of society’s members, and are defined as the eternal. They incessantly intervene in our lives through this eternity.
JoSeub’s photographs address the icons from religions and myths, but the objects fail to reach the world of eternity. He enshrines them in a place filled with the mood of death. Who Wants to Live Forever 01 (2008) is appropriated from The Descent from the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens (1577~1640). Jesus is taken down from the cross in a dead state, which ensures the path to eternity. Of course, this enabled humankind to reach eternity. Paradoxically however, signs of death and horror are evident in this work. The faces of figures appear eerie and unstable like specters. The descent of Christ signifies the path to death, not eternity. Another eye-catching feature is the gaze of the figures. Their eyes do not look to any one point and do not face each other. They just confirm their existence in the situation filled with horror.
Eternal life is not ensured when no agreement is made. There are only desperate struggles to survive. Any aspect of our faith system we have so far firmly believed in is not found there. Our lives are governed by innumerable things, insubstantial yet made out of need. It is natural to unveil their irrationality. However, it is obvious these things will not give up their authority. The logic of necessity will be immersed more deeply and tactfully. We cannot overlook this. JoSeub exposes and disturbs this at its center, delightfully yet inconveniently, inconveniently yet delightfully.
