[Siwon Kim] Critical Essay / Jihan Jang

 The Neverending Story

 Jihan Jang

 

An exhibition is a place where works with autonomous senses are displayed, but it is also a space where events of creation, extinction, or construction and dismantlement take place. Perhaps this is largely the perspective of artists. For the artist ahead of an exhibition, this venue is also a place of internal challenge to go towards the opposite side of the familiar senses, but at the same time, it is also a physical arena that needs to be filled with something. Changing the quality of space is an obligation included in the contract that an artist signs with someone. For the implementation of the contract, the space must be filled and pieces need to be produced. The labor required for the production of sensory things, whether it is a matter or non-material, is actually impossible to calculate. However, there is a practice of writing contracts, and there are side agreements that are not specified in the contract. The venue must be emptied at the end of an exhibition for other works. Works must be produced, but they are stored somewhere at the same time. In most cases, the fate of the pieces after the exhibition is not included in the contract. Of course, the fate of contemporary artworks ends up in destinations unexpected in the past centuries. In our era, they become data through smartphones and are stored in the cloud. What if the journey's end of artworks after exhibitions is not storage where they are stacked against each other, but an archive of vast images of viewers' bodies and private memories intertwined with them? Should we say that they gained eternal life or disappeared into the deep darkness that will never see the light again?
 

Untitled (yesterday tomorrow),

animation, 1 min (loop),

2022

Artist Siwon Kim defines these overall prerequisites that support the exhibition as conditions or situations. In fact, in most cases, the physical conditions of exhibition lose their priorities against autonomous senses and are often hidden behind perceptions. The moment when Kim says conditions or situations, he is revealing the various aspects of contracts that are understood but could be pretended to be unknown, through critical consciousness. In other words, he can no longer concentrate only on creating an autonomous sense in space. If the perception of the condition or situation surrounding exhibitions precedes the reproduction by playing with matters or images, he must start working elsewhere.
 
This does not mean that the artist completely rejects the situation given to him and is immersed in uncovering the truth of the situation. In other words, his critical consciousness surrounding the dynamics of exhibitions does not criticize the system. The conditions of exhibitions cannot be accepted nonchalantly, but they are not subject to criticism and dissolution. In the process of accepting the conditions, Kim intends to establish his own unique place of creation. The condition of the exhibition, which must be denied by the artist, paradoxically seems to be another condition of creation itself.
 

Untitled (yesterday tomorrow),

performance, video, 1 min (loop),

2022

Regarding the 2008 exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), the artist wrote, "After a long contemplation, I decided to participate.” His hesitation was due to poor support and insufficient time. The museum only provided partition walls, pedestals, lighting, painting, and transportation, and he had a little over two months of time. The condition given to the artist was for autonomous pieces, but he accepted the arrangement for other “works.” For the installation Untitled (Sleeping Time Box), the artist recorded and arranged the sleep time for 34 days from the day he decided to work on the project to the day before the transportation of his pieces. Recording and organizing are more of an act that stands on the opposite side of the autonomous senses, that is, “works” faithful to the schedule rather than an amusement that crosses boundaries. Also, the time of the night he recorded is not darkness and silence for the depth of creation, but nights for resting opposite to the days for working. Like this, the act of replacing creation and autonomy with daily life and rules would be a denial of the conditions given to the artist. He writes about this negative space in the form of instruction and writes the promise that he wants to keep on paper, instead of the contract usually agreed upon between the artist and the institution.

 
However, the denial of a given condition paradoxically becomes the prerequisite for the forms that fill the exhibition space to be created. Kim wants to transfer the record of sleep time to a three-dimensional space. In this process, following the instructions written by the artist himself is a denial of the condition as it is. Performing the directive does not just end as a work of recording and organizing, but the record is transformed into preconditions for the form of squares through mathematical calculations. The series of events of recording, organizing, calculating, and producing move toward the opposite direction of the incident that the given condition expects. The contract conditions of providing pedestals and transportation of works are not simply preparing a place for an autonomous piece and transporting it. It only leaves the white boxes produced as a result of the calculation in place.

Untitled,

3 channel video, 24 hours,

2022

 
Nevertheless, we cannot say that Untitled (Sleeping Time Box) is the practice of idleness. We encounter his works, such as Kim actually rows but a boat hovers in the same spot ((Untitled (Explorer)), the practice of continued act of crumpling the same sheets of paper once a day for a year (Untitled (One Day One Year Lifetime)), and the walking without quitting that has the purpose in walking itself ((Untitled (Walking)). However, from his purposelessness and his space of recording and organizing against aesthetics, we witness the time of existence at the same time. Of course, the white boxes freely placed in his Untitled (Sleeping Time Box) might be pedestals without a sculpture or a special object as Donald Judd defines. Considering that the viewers could freely walk around the boxes, touch them, and sit on them to rest as intended by Kim, it is also a space of relationship. However, the denial of this condition, which leads to the production of phenomenological experiences and relationships, is also an existential diagram materialized in the space that can be seen from a distance. The different heights of the boxes provide a place of experience for the visitors, but they are also a record of sleeplessness for the artist. He overlapped his existence in the space of idleness, in which the positions of aesthetics are deleted through the denial of conditions. He also brings in 34 days of time into the presence that physically invites spectators in. The surface of each box is a comfortable space for relaxation, but the collection of the boxes is a record of anxious nights. Through the denial of the conditions, Kim tried to reveal the traces of time that bind his spirit and the condition itself that regulates the body, not the irrationality and dynamics of power in the contract. He wrote about this work as "paying back through the exhibition,” returning his concerns. Of course, rather than a meticulous strategy, it should be said that his body is finally lifted without himself knowing it in the practice of idleness. This return of favors is going to be repeated indefinitely. This is not because the artist's instructions are a score that can be played indefinitely. This is because other conditions and situations will continue to bring him back to his original place.
 

 
Jihan Jang (Critic)
He graduated from the Department of Art Theory at the Korea National University of Arts and a doctoral candidate in art history at The State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the author of That There Then: Kim Beom and Chung Seoyoung’s Writing and Drawing.