Not Comfort, Something More
Hur Hojeong
2020
1. Assertion
This ‘abstracted’ screen by Jeong Kyeongbin’s asserts something. It puts on the backside and asserts an event that doesn’t quite directly arouse the viewing eyes.
That is to say, the creator behind these works is a body; specifically, one that is in captivity, imprisoned in a box, bed-ridden, aching in muscles and nerves, and tormented by something slippery, coarse, and repulsive. When this enormous canvas displays paint that is thickly slathered, flows down, and crushed, along with the touch of the brush that rubs, stabs, and tickles the surface, we must interpret this as a projection and at the same time penetration of the body.
Is this assertion warranted?
2. Representation
There’s a point of misapprehension between the narrative Jeong Kyeongbin depicts, and me listening to and scribing it. The pictures that call themselves ‘illusions’ are brought forth from the suffering bodies, and to become an image that can be comforted, they establish the bodies’ pain, unnaturalness, and oppression as the precondition. I approach the images formed through manners described above by writing, discovering misapprehensions engendered by myself. Here are such misunderstandings that take the form of questions.
First, are pictures capable of ‘reflecting’ or ‘expressing’ pain? However, this kind of approach does not yield many fruits. Whether if she says yes or no, pictures can form ‘association’ with certain types of pain. This is what leads Jeong Kyeongbin’s claim to be so contentious. Although there is no evidence that certain visual images
inevitably and naturally reflect or express pain, one can at least claim that such visual images can be associated with pain. Here, Jeong Kyeongbin’s pictures neither directly feature suffering bodies, nor do they share iconic customs that could evoke pain.
Second, what makes her think that particular fear/trauma/tragedy/pain cannot be represented? Is it because the subject matter’s cruelty and immediacy incite discomfort? If so, how should oblique images, ones that go out of their ways to not represent? Jeong Kyeongbin says through this kind of image-making she avoids representing, but instead makes a detour and forms different truth’ of a particular fear/trauma/tragedy/pain inflicted to her, or the society. In a word, Jeong Kyeongbin’s drawings do not display those clues. These do not indicate the status of the pain and tragedy, nor testify.
In truth, her drawings appear to not reflect or express pain, nor intend to represent, but rather to be dreaming of all these. As a result, what we see is a picture that reminds us of such things as water streams, paint, the flickering of light, the trace of brush, marks that born from brush and resemble fur, overcast shadow, white-colored wall, plaster that fills it, white shirttail, wave, breath, specter, and so on.
3. After Tragedy
After Auschwitz, after 9.11, after Sewol, and after so many individual or societal tragedies, artworks and exhibitions that follow them must by themselves reach or surpass the proof, witness, and mourning of ‘topical’ stories.
Oftentimes people considered that the art couldn’t ‘dare to represent tragedy and trauma, nor should it. Provocative artworks are prohibited unless the artists were proven to be directly involved with the events in question, and if not, couldn’t avoid accusations from “the party involved.” On one hand, some have confirmed that such restriction could potentially stifle art as a whole and made their voices of concern louder. Instead of pornographic consumption of images that made some forms of censorship express alarm, some started to assert the images’ own potential that is certified by art through the autonomy of contemporary significance.’
And now let us skip to the present. In the present – a period that went through history, anachronism, and timelessness – art reaffirms its own autonomy through the format of works and exhibition. On and offline, art displays the physical presence of the image, enabling its own struggles and politics. In this context, contemporary criticism focuses on artworks that do not just capitalize on tragedy but instead finds a place in the present by ‘dialectically reconsidering narration and the grammar of witness and testimony of tragic events.
Consequently, current criticism is permitted to discuss art/exhibition that is associated with certain tragedies, loss and illness, and resulting pain, and it must by itself understand the long and desperate struggle surrounding the impossibility of testimony and representation’ The interest of criticism does not lie in the tragedies of the past, present, and the future themselves, but certain artworks that decided to involve themselves in the manifest perspective of reorienting tragedies and their exhibition. Not only that, one is mindful of these art pieces and the exhibition’s format that wrestles with the subject. Foremost, it is essential to pay attention’ closely to the dynamics between this content and the format.
4. Transformation
Laure, five years old, plays with her sister using a white bed sheet. She lies on the bed completely still and tells her sister to put the bedsheet over her. Then there is silence.
Laure stays still under the sheet over the bed as if dead. Follows is her sister bursting into tears. Then Laure bolts upright and surprises her, transforming the crying into roaring laughter as the play continues on. Laure and her sister lost their mother just a while ago?
Certain objects brings a certain memory. That memory can sometimes be cruel, sad, and painful. But the objects get ever so slightly relocated to places different from the memory, and these relocations transform the pain and suffering into something else.
Laure and her sister’s white bed sheet differs from one that covered their mother’s cold dead body, transcending into play that emphasizes such difference. The rising and falling of the white sheet activates memory in a different way.
Jeong Kyeongbin remembers the physical and bodily pain, oppression, and unnaturalness that a sick body must’ve endured. Long hospital hallway, old building’s stairs, rain seeping through windows, patient gown, foams, bodily fluids, torture, oppression, specter, etc. These are the memories that 193cm-long canvases that completely fill the exhibition share. All these have their beginnings in the body that couldn’t move in front of the obstructing walls, from the white wall. But the artist does not let the white walls be just that and adds colors. She takes illusionary light, the texture of flesh and fur, something that looks like sardine flopping on a submerged pan, sunlight, shade, another frame that exists within the picture, spots, waterdrop, brush mark, and make them all ride up above white color and replaces the wall with another illusion.
Now, these pictures must tell different stories. They should set themselves into an
‘image that went through a totally different, complete transformation during the process of changing a personal confession of her body and illness into a visual image.’ So this is not comfort, but rather a transformation to the image of the event and tragedy themselves. Instead of making tragedy impossible by actively rejecting representation, the image starts from the impossibility itself and undergoes a transformation.
If it’s not comfort, what kind of story should we expect from Jeong Kyeongbin?
1. Choi-Jeongcheol, “When the ‘Representation of Disaster’ Becomes ‘Disaster of Representation’ – Cultural Politics of Impossibility of Representation,” ” Journal of Korean Art History , 42nd issue, 2014.
2. Georges Didi-Huberman, “By the Desires,” Uprisings (Paris: Jeu de Paume), 2016, 289-90.