-ISCP _Rachel Cook(Curator and Writer)
Changhoon Lee: Outside and Inside
In considering notions and concepts of space we should bear in mind how
it is framed, through language or physically in the world. Moreover, the
precise language we use to describe physical space, through the words “inside”
and “outside” reveal a clear directional separation. These two words
immediately draw a boundary that illustrates a division within the physical
world. What is included or excluded from the interior or exterior of a space
determines its boundaries, both on this page and the view from the window in
the room we are sitting in. The “frame” determines how we perceive the idea of
space and place. Additionally when further examined space and place can be
connected to more complex ideas of ideological spatial boundaries that have
become contested spiritual and political concepts. The international border has
become a huge point of contention and becomes the frame for how we speak about
various people and cultures. Every society creates space and has ways of
organizing it within a city. Neighborhoods are laid-out according to certain
methodologies, the location of important places and landmarks reveal the
intricacies of power in any given geographic location, and certain boundaries
affect inhabitant’s mobility, all of which are connected to society’s
construction of space.
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We can also think of space from a phenomenological point of view;
how we carry with us the notion of the spatial unconscious; how we organize our
lives; how we arrange our home. Our public and private spaces are divided, and
designate a boundary of control through which we allow access—physically and
emotionally—at any given point in time. The domestic space of a house can be
described as the lived experience of space, and its physical layout and
structure can affect our emotional state. Space can also be thought of as an
abstract notion of time, where something is “here” or “there,” positioning it
spatially and temporally. Either of which can be described as conceptual ideas
of locations or events, or when referring to where an object is placed in a
room.
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Korean artist Changhoon Lee explores
notions of space in his work through a series of still and moving images,
conceptual objects, and performative interventions that examine how we
construct these notions of space, place, inside, outside, and the alienation
that exists between them. For example in Lost One’s Way--Sweet
Story (2011) Lee appropriates a
large street sign pointing in four different directions Jongno being one, which
is the oldest major east-west thoroughfare in Seoul. The work takes the sign as
a literal symbol for finding directions on a road. The sign is placed on the
back of a truck and driven to a beach where it is firmly planted in the sand.
This performative gesture allows our ideas of place and space to be conflated
and re-imagined. The huge highway sign is out of place on a sandy beach,
however it functions as a representation of the alienation individuals
experience when traveling to unfamiliar surroundings or experiencing a different
landscape, city, or place. Additionally the sign points to a particular
cultural and economic breakdown of the city of Seoul. Jongno is a significant
financial and cultural district that connects Sejongno, the diplomatic area, to
Dongdaemun, the cultural historic area. While Lee’s work points to a more
abstract and conceptual understanding of these two geographic locations, the
specific details allow us to better understand how a city itself is constructed
through a series of historical and cultural events that affect its
spatial-financial breakdown.
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Lee’s work lifts or removes the details from
maps and street signs in order to reemphasize our cultural and conceptual
notion of space and place in the world. Just as Gaston Bachelard considers the
house a “privileged entity for a phenomenological study of the intimate values
of inside space”[1] Lee transforms an image of the exterior of a
house by removing all windows and doors looking in or out of it. Lee’s images, Babelstreet (2008) and Island (2007), appear hauntingly banal until the
viewer realizes the absence of the framing device separating the interior and
exterior of the domestic structure. Lee has rendered these homes as objects and
removed all notions of how people inhabit them while allowing ideas of being or
belonging to come into focus. By stripping away detailed information, Lee’s
work heightens the viewer’s attention to hone in on the structure or object in
question–maps, road signs, or houses. In Lost the Way—sea, wood,
desert (2011) Lee renders a
single colored sign into an abstract color field painting of these landscape
locations. These three road signs not only become visual indicators for each
landscape, but also operate as a phenomenological understanding of each place
(sea, woods, or desert).
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These investigations speak to the
disconnectedness between the individual and the inner ideological workings of a
society. The human-ness of how global spaces are
constructed and laid out is directly connected to how we organize our most
intimate places. Lee’s work creates a framing device that throws into question
how these systems and mechanisms of organizing space are thought through. If
these structures¾maps, road signs, or houses¾reveal an
intimate human organizing system in how we think about society than what does
it reveal if we reexamine them without the detailed information; as “forms”
unto themselves? Herein lies the crux of Lee’s investigation, is there a
universal system to understanding society’s notion and construction of space?
Lee’s use of formal and conceptual representations of our understanding of
space, place, inside, outside, and alienation prod us to question how we create
or dismantle borders and boundaries between cultures.
This article is commissioned
by the Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon as part of international Critique Program 2012
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