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Between Spaces |
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Seungtaik Jang |
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Flesh and Bones I want to eat sashimi. The smoother the sashimi, the better. My tongue seeks the smoothness. The more transparent the sashimi, the better. While my conscious mind seeks the smoothness and transparency of sashimi, my unconscious mind is not as smooth and transparent. My unconscious mind is obscure, sometimes wicked, sometimes self-righteous, and can express irrational aggression. My mind travels from the hot bathwater of rage to the cold bathwater of cynicism. This conscious mind of mine knows how to feel sad. It swallows bottomless, endless depression. This bottomlessness, this endlessness, must come from my mind’s stepchild, the unconscious. When I want to be awake with transparent and smooth consciousness, my stepchild unconscious announces its presence like a sharp bone embedded in a piece of sashimi, like the texture of dark trees in a midnight forest, asserting its existence. It approaches like a fear that provokes curiosity. Fear and curiosity. A thin slice of sashimi lying within this self-contradictory dual structure. That is my act of making art.
My Self and Universality Some say that creating art is an alternative in order to generating a collision. If I agreed, I might say that making art is like filling the gaps between endless pairs of repetitive poles, between repression and transcendence. Artistic products are the result of deliberate play based on purely materialistic relationships among many subjects. I do not aim for representation in the conventional sense. The intention of my work is to express something totally subjective in the most individual way. My work cannot surpass the collective act of my creative talent, sensibility, and memories. The most personally expressive method can be most original when it is unconscious, such as the innate, naturally occurring thoughts and inspirations that reveal themselves in the most direct expressions and forms of the consciousness. I consider the most personal inner desires and expressions of the senses to be the most universal ones.
Fire: Origin of Civilization and Element of the End of the World Most of my work is made by fire and heat. Of the four elements, only fire brings out fear and curious imagination simultaneously. This truth lies in the fact that we learn to fear fire during childhood through the experience of heat. We begin to develop awareness of objects and judgement after infancy, but at the same time, despite the danger, we are tempted to play with fire. The discovery of fire marks the beginning of civilization and brought with it the culture of food that defines the difference between humans and animals. This is a culture of smoothness. Fire is purity that belongs to no one despite its power that can combust, change, and extinguish everything with its intense visual beauty. How many times have our aspirations flourished during long winter nights before a brazier or contemplative candles? Such universal reverberations transcend time and space over centuries. My work is the act of seeking and building the fundamental nature of this inner echo of universality. Burning, soothing, boiling, melting, pouring, hardening, and melting again – fire is the catalyst for my work. Chernobyl and Mount Etna Art depends on nature, but art restores nature and makes it into something superior, more beautiful, more truthful, and impossible to define. The criteria for beauty and truth vary depending on periods and artists. We are enraged when we think of Chernobyl, rage from fear, yet we are not angry when reminded of Mount Etna’s volcanic eruptions because it is the fear of awe. Etna is beautiful because we imagine the core of the volcano. It is less artificial, stronger, and more fundamental. It is the purest essential element whose center is the surest, unlike the tame desire that craves sashimi. Etna is alive, breathing, flowing, always intense. It transforms everything, mixes all subjects, and dissolves. Its heat and gas are strong enough to smother all living things. Come, Etna, I dream to be completely silent, smothered in your womb! Translation Hyewon Yi Preface to his solo show at Gallery Seo Hwa, 1993. |
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