Re-recognition of Frontality Recognizable within 0.3 Seconds: reinstalled/reset images from Hyelim Jun's work
Yuki Konno
What exactly is an image?
I received Hyelim Jun's work as images, and I contemplated how I would view them. As the artist said, paintings possess a frontality that can be recognized within 0.3 seconds. However, in this era, it is perfectly fine to use the term “images” interchangeably with “paintings.” Receiving records of exhibition overviews and individual photos of pieces as images and listening to explanations are not limited to Jun's works. In that case, can we consider Jun's attempt as a resistant attitude towards the fate called the image of painting? Can it be viewed as an attempt to oppose the pictorial conditions in the name of so-called sculptural painting or installation work? Several of Jun's pieces were spatially displayed at Index of six sides (Hapjungjigu, 2019) and The escape conditions of recursive maze (Post Territory Ujeongguk, 2020). Recently, she has attempted “plane-hedron,” not hexahedron. When you hear this, you might think that Jun pursues medium experiments between flat surfaces and three-dimensional structures through sculptural painting against the variable nature of images.
Before paying attention to media formats that conceptually seek trade-offs and extensions between flats and 3D, I would like to start from a more fundamental perspective. What kind of image was Jun's reproduction target? As she worked with materials, such as a scene from animation, landscapes, and images of paradise, how did she view them? The key point is that the frame defining the viewer's perspective or the image dismantles the connection between presented scenes and is reconstructed to show the emanated gap between them, instead of starting with images or data as visual information and pursuing physical properties/materialities. The aforementioned materials appear in a form of setup in the artist's series Shape of the gaze and Things, and the explanation can become simpler if we call them installation pieces because they can be considered as reinstallation attempts instead. They cannot be simply defined as data or image files. An ideal viewing condition is removed. The connection between the gaze of the steady perspective and the mobility that reduces the distance and presents them in front of our eyes, in other words, the connection between visual information and the viewer's position is detached.
Combined surfaces,
the picture of art space geumcheon open studio 6,
2022
Not an installation, but a reinstallation of perspectives and images
One step ahead of the media experiment that occurs in the process of moving from working on flat pieces to three-dimensional pieces, the artist already recognized distance, speed, and mobility in images. She had already found a clue to the frontality that can be recognized within 0.3 seconds from materials, such as views presented to you when you gaze at landscapes, a continuous and momentary scene from animation, and the beautiful and ideal paradise summoned in right front of your eyes. In order to contemplate this frontality, Jun reconstructs and dismantles the ideal view through her work. Her pieces can be considered as the result of capturing recognizable views as paintings even when they are separated or quickly passed by then re-presenting and reconstructing themselves in exhibition spaces. This is not the result of solving the conditions of painting with materials like thin and transparent cloth, the three-dimensional nature of the canvas, or human intervention. Reconstructing and dismantling the positions of images and viewers begins with the condition that the images already encompass the time and space differently and yet are in front of viewers' eyes. Paradises and landscapes have captured scenes that do not exist now or did not exist until now, and animations consist of countless drawn scenes.
The artist spatially re-created views. However, when the view is set or arranged through material compositions, it presents the frontality that can be recognized within 0.3 seconds. Moreover, it cracks spatiotemporal positions, which pull in viewers to be immersed in viewing. The crack was not created by contemplating the format or conditions of the medium for working on planar or solid pieces. It arose from questioning the form of painting that can be derived from dismantling and reconstructing the original time and space of the image that the artist worked with. We can change the artist's statement as follows; “A painting as a frontality in which images recognizable within 0.3 seconds can be returned.” Representing instantaneously appearing or have appeared images as paintings and breaking up that momentary appearances from the viewer's point of view form the basis of Jun's work. As a result, her pieces are spatial or three-dimensional, but they are different from media experiments that variably transform two-dimensional data into three-dimensional matters, and vice versa.
Combined surfaces,
the picture of art space geumcheon open studio 6,
2022
Hexahedron and plane-hedron: excess surface
We can fully review painting through the word hexahedron. Until now, painting experiments mentioned in art history have been sought toward the painting itself, such as the place of vanishing point that presents an illusory space, the space for self-criticizing flatness, and the space for an image where everything can be transferred to like the word “screen” suggests. Through the word, “hexahedron,” we can think about the relationship between the frame and the inner part of the painting. Paintings are not just simply flat and are not a space full of illusions. However, the word, “hexahedron,” leads to the conclusion that space also consists of surfaces when we look at them. The space in a painting, the space called painting, or where a painting is hung can only be seen as a surface to us, in other words, as an image. The attitude of only understanding that painting begins and ends on a surface or that a space is created only on a surface will end up in a vicious cycle of dimensions, so-called two-dimension and three-dimension.
Combined surfaces,
Canvas fabric on top of canvas frame, gesso, acrylic, Dimensions Variable,
2022
