참여작가ㅣ나점수, 백순실

무수히 스쳐가는 ‘공간’은 많지만 감정이 묶이고 사유가 머무는 ‘장소’가 되는 공간은 많지 않다. 중립적인 공간이 사적인 장소로 변하는 순간과 계기에 대해 환경운동가들도 관심을 보이고 있다. 환경의 질에 대한 논의는 많으나 인간이 공간과 장소를 어떻게 느끼는지 이해하려는 연구는 드물다는 것이다. 인간과 환경의 구분을 전제로 한 기존의 사고방식을 넘어 환경에 대한 정서적 유대를 뜻하는 ‘토포필리아 (Topophilia)’라는 신조어가 개별적이고 주관적인 관계성에 대해 강조하고 있듯이, 블루메미술관의 개관전은 느리게 쌓여가고 형성되는, 그리하여 이성과 속도의 문명에서 소외되어온 정서, 태도에 주목한다. 자연환경을 작업의 원천으로 삼는 두 명의 작가가 보여주는 환경에 대한 서로 다른 경험과 정서적 관계에 관하여 다루며 이 전시는 ‘자연’이라는 짧고 빠른 단어로 축약될 수 없는 느리고 긴 스펙트럼을 가진 자연환경을 정원과 광야라는 극적 대비로 펼쳐놓고 두 작가가 그 안에 존재하는 공간들에 관여하고 관계 맺는 서로 다른 태도와 정서를 다룬다. 미술관이 위치한 환경, 장소에 대한 성찰에서 출발하는 이 전시는 중견작가인 백순실의 회화, 설치와 신진작가인 나점수의 조각, 설치 21여 점으로 구성되며 이를 통해 미술관이 만들어진 현재와 앞으로 나아갈 미래를 보여주고자 한다.

기획 및 글ㅣ김은영
진행ㅣ이우현, 최선화
홍보ㅣ김소영
촬영ㅣ정진수
디자인ㅣ엄진아

Participating artistsㅣJeom Soo Na, Soon Shil Baik

As if ones associate themselves with the space where they have stayed even for a while, people personalize a neutral space and form the attachment relation. With the term ‘topophilia’ referring to an emotional attachment to place, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan underscores man “emotionally” bound up with the physical environment. While discussion on place mainly highlights the macroscopic contexts such as political, social, and historical backgrounds inherent in space, the concept of ‘topophilia’ takes notes of a microscopic phenomenon that space becomes a private place. Environmental activists display their interest in the moment and momentum a space turns into a place where an individual’s feeling and thought dwell. An environmental quality has been frequently discussed, but studies to understand how man feels space and place have been rarely conducted. An exploration of an individual, a subjective relationship between man and environment beyond the pre-existing way of thinking anchored to the distinction between man and environment as subject and object comes down to a problem of an individual’s experience after all. Experience in art has been regarded to degenerate the dignity of art involving aesthetic perception, confined to individual feelings and senses as experience in social science undervalued because it cannot be numerically represented. However, as John Dewy defined, “Experience is a lively, vivid relationship with the world.”*** We have to focus on aspects of experience as an interaction itself between man and environment, inseparable into two parts: sensibility and reason, matter and spirit. The status of emotion and feeling once positioned at the lower level of thinking by dichotomous logic needs to be reappraised. This is because of the fact that feeling and emotion alongside knowledge are the underlying element of the relationship between you and me, nature and man, and involve all things in the world rather than being an interest in evolutionary competition. Works of Na Jeom Soo and Baik Soon Shil are abstract and achromatic. Their attitude is to condense something rather than reel it off concretely. In this respect, their work may be seen as having interest in pure plasticity based on a psychological distance. What actually occurs from their abstraction is feeling and emotion in concreteness rather than thinking on “abstract,” modeling purity and form itself. Works of Baik and Na draw viewers with feeling and emotion stemmed from synesthesia rather than presupposing the distance of seeing them. Their abstraction is not a reflection of their metaphysical thinking but is anchored to their experience based on the body. In a word, their abstraction derives from topophilia. Their abstraction is an outgrowth of relationships where the place is in the center of experience, and the observer is associated with the place. The nucleus of experience the two artists had is mainly nature. According to Yi-Fu Tuan, nature today has lost almost all power to generate some awe along with its loftiness and depth. Instead, it has newly acquired the less rigid qualification of magnetism and vividness. Although nature remains generally shrunken in contemporary society, for Na and Baik, nature is still cosmic. The exhibition Topophilia: The Poetics of Place cannot be summarized in one word; nature. The natural environment, with a long broad spectrum, unfolds in a dramatic contrast between a vast desert and daily garden. The show addresses different attitudes and sensibilities through which two participating artists are involved in and enter into a connection with spaces within the natural environment. The place here, the center of such relational experience is a material rather than a sphere. This place is touched and felt, involving feeling and emotion, rather than existing by any abstract division. The place cannot help bearing a poetic language as it is the place where Gaston Bachelard’s material imagination comes into being. Works in such places make the space where the works stand poetic.