이미지의 속도로 달리는 조각
참여작가ㅣ권오상, 테츠야 나카무라

자동차의 속도감을 한껏 만끽할 수 있는 자유로를 지나 헤이리 예술마을에 들어서면 자연의 속도를 따라 시간이 멈춘 듯 하다. 이런 느림을 지향하는 블루메미술관에서 이번에는 가장 빠른 조각을 선보인다. 0의 속도를 지닌 조각이 탐할 수 있는 가장 빠른 속도의 사물, 슈퍼카와 경주용차를 보여주는 권오상과 테츠야 나카무라의 작품을 통해 이 전시는 조각에 관한 물음에 현대사회를 투영시킨다. 두 한∙일 작가의 조각개념을 새롭게 해석하며 이 전시는 날카로운 광택에 몰두하는 테츠야 작품과 손으로 만져가며 채색한 회화적인 표면이 두드러진 권오상의 조각을 대비시키며 조각의 표면에 초점을 맞춘다. 무거운 덩어리로서의 조각이 표면의 시각성을 통해 가벼워지고 미끄러지듯 0의 속도로부터 벗어나게 되는 것에 주목한다. 여기서 속도감은 물리적이기보다 심리적인 것으로 수없이, 무척 빠르게 다가오고 멀어지는 현대사회 이미지들의 그것과 닮아있다. 속도를 낼 수 없는 조각에 이미지의 속도를 오버랩 시키는 두 작가의 작품으로 이 전시는 동시대 조각에 관한 질문을 현대사회에 안착시킨다. 오늘날 모든 것은 손에 채 잡히기도 전에 눈앞에서 빠르게 스쳐가고 미끄러져 간다. 멈춰져 있는 조각도 이미지의 속도를 업고 달리기 시작한다. 슈퍼카를 브론즈로 만들었다는 사실로 화제를 모았던 권오상은 그의 람보르기니를 전시장 밖 야외중정에 설치하여 자연의 속도와 대비된 모습을 보여주며 Lotus자동차 잡지로 만든 대형 Flat 신작을 새롭게 선보인다. 속도의 진화를 모토로 실제 경주용차나 제트기를 닮은 GTR같은 작품에서 더 빠른 것을 향한 상상의 형태로 이동하는 테츠야 나카무라의 신작과 더불어 총 11여 점의 작품이 전시된다.

기획ㅣ김은영
홍보ㅣ김소영
진행ㅣ이우현, 양다혜
교육ㅣ이신영, 한상은
글ㅣ김노암, 김은영
디자인ㅣ엄진아

Sculpture running at the speed of image
Participating artistsㅣOsang Gwon, Tetsuya Nakamura

Does sculpture have speed? As the term ‘statue’ originated from the Latin ‘static,’ sculpture is traditionally thought of as a stationary object with zero speed. Sculpture as mass with a sense of volume and weight has in history appeared to move as an illusion, or has defied a sense of weight through its linear form. Or, it has actually moved, like kinetic sculpture, departing from zero speed. Sculpture’s ‘stationary’ objecthood has turned into changing, moving materiality, expanding to a larger category encompassing space. However, what we call ‘sculpture’ freestanding and stationary in space is still effective: it is alright to say this is the most optical definition of ‘sculptural sculpture’. In this exhibition on sculpture, ironically, Osang Gwon and Tetsuya Nakamura display the fastest things that can be depicted in sculpture with zero speed. Lamborghini cars and Ducati motorcycles Osang Gwon has reproduced are things that pass by us fast in modern daily life, and Tetsuya Nakamura’s streamlined sculpture redolent of racing cars or jet planes is likely to move at the velocity of sound. Their stationary sculptures seem to run at the maximum speed. The strong sensation of speed felt in static sculpture is not merely derived from a representation of quick objects. Nakamura’s sculpture over five meters long appears agile rather than massive because of its streamlined shape and above all the sleek metallic surface wrapping it: the lustrous surface makes the sculpture as mass shatter into light with straightforward impetus. This sensation of speed lent by the movement of reflected light is for the artist both form and content, denoting contemporary society exuberating and intensely appearing yet nonchalantly disappearing at speed. His sculpture completely capturing viewer attention with its surface without a scratch or trace, like a surface polished by machine resembles a way of modern life through which contemporary people rush toward superficial desire, with content that arouses and vanishes from the surface. In contrast, Gwon’s sculpture demonstrates surface with the trace of the hand rather than of the machine. While Nakamura sticks to a mechanical aesthetic sense despite the use of his hand in polishing the surface, Gwon leaves the trace of his hand adding and polishing in a traditional manner, with the texture of clay adhered and cracked. Gwon’s sculpture such as a Lamborghini car  made in a feel of ‘large as flat mass’, intending to engender an intrinsic sculptural sense of volume, and Ducati motorcycle made like a ‘torso’ through modeling are not however interestingly felt with any sense of heavy weight. This is associated with the fact that he has actually made light or seemingly light sculpture with photographs. Gwon represents objects by gluing pieces of photographic papers on a styrofoam mass after taking photographs like he was scanning the surfaces of real objects. The photographic pieces, all slightly dislocated, lessen a sense of weight, shattering sculpture’s sense of mass into pieces of imagery. In The Flat series, he challenges the relation between a flat surface and a sculptural mass more aggressively. He makes the flat image stand from a shiny magazine surface exploring the sculptural sense of space and volume. That is, the surface brings forth a sculptural mass. In the subsequent The Sculpture series, the surface again deconstructs the mass. His Lamborghini, The Sculpture, appears made of a heavy bronze mass, with its entire surface covered in orange paint feels no sense of real weight. Likewise, his torsos of bikes whose logos and patterns are depicted in paints of diverse colors, and on which brush strokes are sometimes left, make our eyes immediately react to its pictorial surface rather than its weighty tactile sense. In his sculpture that is considered a mass but makes our eyes keep moving in chase of surface, visuality of the surface generates a seemingly gliding movement and sensation of speed. Speed here is psychological, not physical: it is like the speed of images in contemporary society that come close and move away quickly. By assuming that Nakamura’s sculpture evolves to attain a more speedy and fast form, what he competes with is not the speed of a jet plane faster than the speed of sound, but the velocity of images poured out from numerous media, fleeting away, stimulating our senses quickly and intensely. As we internalize such speed and desire for more rapid images and information in daily life, Nakamura moves to another imaginary form with the sensation of a faster speed occurring at the moment when form of a specific sensation of speed is realized. His sculpture titled Replica is not a reproduction of speedy objects existing in reality but a concretization of his desire to seek for the faster when the sensation of the speed he pursued has been realized. To the contrary, Gwon’s sculpture looks like a representation of real things since his cars and bikes are modeled after specific models of Lamborghini and Ducati. Interesting is that he made them referring to plastic scale models, or photographs acquired from the internet rather than modeled them from real objects. Like the photographic perspective of David Hockney, who pointed out that “Photography only sees the surface, not the space,” Gwon’s three-dimensional representative things are extracted from images brushing the surface. When we google a Ducati model, thousands of images are searched: information necessary for grasping an object, from the entire shape to small parts of the engine, emerges through fragmentation. His sculpture brings about a sense of actual presence as a three-dimensional object occupying space, arousing an unrealistic feeling like a combination of numerous images existing away from the original. This is largely derived from this process of his work production. It is not so awkward to comment on speed as a qualification for sculpture since sculpture exists in the visuality of the times. Gwon Osang and Tetsuya Nakamura reply to a question about sculpture in contemporary society, lending speed of the image to sculpture that cannot have speed itself. Everything today is swiftly fleeting and slipping away before being caught by hand: the true nature of speed is exposed in space through these two sculptors.