ajj1000@gmail.com
The World I Saw
Hwang Shin Won(Curator, Project Space
SARUBIA)
The world looks different depends on
which frame we fit the world in. It is difficult to realize the gap between the
subjective experience about the world and the objective reality for the thought
that we are looking at the world as it is. An Jung-ju focuses on the social
structure and socialization process which is firmly established through a long period
of time. The artist reminds us of the things that define us simply and
familiarly by switching the viewpoint to newly define the relationship with the
surrounding environment or by “reframing.” Also, the artist makes us realize
the viewpoint in which we understand phenomenon or a meaning and the framework
through which we look at the world, suggesting an approach of looking at inside
from outside such boundaries.
The video by An Jung-ju that filmed the
story of everyday living in a documentary format does not clearly express the
purpose and also restrains any aggressive statement. It only provides the
artist’s viewpoint to bring out the memory and experience of the viewer to see
the world from a different perspective. The artists fully played his role by
suggesting another viewpoint to the blind reality.
Recent video works focus on the process
of socializing people. The socialization process where a person learns the code
of conduct, norms, and values expected by the society he or she belongs to is comprised
of experience and knowledge, and the education plays the major role in the
course. Especially, the artist focuses on the socialization process of a child.
Until recently, group events such as group gymnastics and tug-of-war played on
the field day teach children the common goal and culture that children can go
along with and understand in the group they belong to with others. At the same
time, they show the stage in the socialization which causes the interaction
with the environment that surrounds them.
Not only the field day but also
sociopolitical phenomena specific to Korea are the major concern of the artist.
The conventional promises that appear during election campaigns and that
everyone knows and the flowery words that they are going to build a better
place to live no longer interest people at all. It is difficult to confirm how
the feelings such as the piety, magnificence, beauty, and firmness that we feel
as a citizen of Korea while looking at the national flag fluttering in the
wind. As described, the works of An Jung-ju look at the world through the frame
that considers how loosely and distortedly the things that were accepted
naturally are fit into everyday living.
His attempt to have a strange view on
everyday living becomes a mechanism for rediscovering the reality through the
gap that we became insensitive to and easily miss in living. The work of
reframing is the scene from everyday living that we would have passed by if we
saw it in personis a process of unearthing more profound truth in simple
reality and revealing the basic order that constitutes the world. The world
that An Jung-ju saw is the passage to the truth where the starting point of the
thought that rather takes gradual approach but makes a great difference is
embedded in life.
