기질, 무한히 펼쳐진 당신의 내적재료가 작품과 만나다
참여작가ㅣ손경화, 우한나, 유비호, 이병찬, 장성은, 정성윤, 조현, 최성임

공감을 통해 집단은 안정되어 빠르게 평상시 활동이 회복된다. 동물행동학자인 프란스 드 발은 『공감의 시대』에서 공동체의 생존에 필수적인 모든 사회적 가치는 공감본능에서 비롯되었다고 말한다. 코로나19로 변화된 사회에서 이 전시는 미술관 관객의 생물학적 본성에 주목하며 인간의 공감본능이 작동하는 지점으로써 ‘재료’에 주목한다. 관객을 구성하는 재료와 작가의 재료가 어떻게 서로 반응하는가 그 작동원리와 양상을 살펴보며 미술관에 존재하는 유무형의 재료들이 서로가 서로를 사용하며 만들어내는 생명현상으로서의 예술경험을 조명해보고자 한다. 관객의 재료를 많이 움직이는 작품이란 무엇인가라는 질문을 바탕으로 개인의 다양한 내적재료에 주목해온 상담전문기관 그로잉맘과 협업하여 이 전시는 8명 현대미술작가들의 작품을 바라보는 새로운 관점을 제시하고자 한다. 재료는 사실 무한하다. 작가가 작품으로 들여와 사용하는 것은 거의 모든 것이다. 물리적, 물질적, 언어적인 것, 순간적인 것에서 항구적인 것에 이르기까지 작품의 재료는 분류가 가능하다. 골라 선택할 수 있고 담고자 하는 이야기와의 짜임도 가능하다. 때로 물적기반을 지닌 재료에 이끌리어 작품이 시작되기도 하고 재료의 몸을 감춘 채 추상적인 구조의 사고체계가 작품의 전면을 이루기도 한다. 재료는 작품의 문을 열기도 하고 닫기도 한다. 그런데 또 하나의 재료가 있다. 소통을 전제로 나아오는 작품에서 작가는 사실상 다른 재료도 쓰고 있다. 그것은 부피도 형태도 없고 측정가능한 범주도 없다. 어떻게 고정할 수 있는지, 얼만큼 소진되는지, 발현되는지 예측할 수 없다. 바로 관객이 들여오는 재료이다. 작가의 내적동기가 일으켜 세운 작품은 이를 찾아온 관객의 내적자원을 당겨온다. 인간 개인의 내면에서 일어나는 일의 전제를 그가 가진 타고난 '재료'의 차이라 설명하는 상담전문기관 그로잉맘의 말에서 시작된 이 전시는 세상의 모든 재료를 사용하는 작품이 그보다 더 무한히 다양한 관객의 내적재료와 만나는 모습에 주목하고자 한다. 비가시적이지만 분명 또 하나의 요소로 존재하는 관객의 재료는 개별개인이 타고난 양은 같되 서로 다른 속성값으로 작품에 대한 경험과 그 의미를 구성한다. 하나의 열린 구조안에서 작가와 관객의 재료가 다양한 경험의 스펙트럼 만들어내며 작품의 의미를 다층화하는 것이다. 일방적인 발언의 의사를 지닌 작품조차도 공간으로 나아온 재료를 끌어쓰고 있다. 관객이 서있는 전시장은 기실 온통 심리적인 공간이기 때문이다. 이 전시에서는 서로가 서로를 재료로 사용한다. 작품과 관객이 그리고 관객과 관객이 서로의 재료를 쓰고 또 쓰이는 그 교환과 작용의 언어를 읽어보고자 한다. 

전시협력ㅣ그로잉맘
후원ㅣ한국문화예술위원회
북큐레이션ㅣ라비브북스
기획ㅣ김은영, 김소영
진행 및 교육ㅣ허은, 박유진, 신은률, 이회남
글ㅣ김은영, 이다랑
디자인ㅣ노현지
사진ㅣ박현욱

The artwork and the audience use each other as material
Participating artistsㅣKyung Hwa Shon, Woo Hannah, RYU Biho, Lee Byungchan, CHANG Sung Eu, Jung Sungyoon, Hyun Cho, Sungim Choi

Empathy tends to stabilize a group and help it resume its normal activities. Etymologist Frans de Waal holds in his book The Age of Empathy that every social value that is absolutely essential for a community’s survival derived from an instinct for empathy. This exhibition perceives “material” as the point where the human instinct for empathy comes into play while bringing attention to the biological nature of a museum visitor in a society which has been changed by COVID-19. This exhibition is designed to examine how the audience and the artist’s materials react to one another, its operation principles and aspects, in order to shed light on an artistic experience as a phenomenon of life that is brought about when tangible and intangible materials tap into one another. The exhibit intends to offer a new perspective on works by eight contemporary artists in collaboration with Growing Mom, a counseling institution which has observed a variety of individuals’ inner materials, based on the question, “What is a work of art that more talks with a viewer’s materials?” In fact, there is an infinite variety of materials. Almost everything an artist brings to his or her work is materials. The materials of an artwork can be pigeonholed as physical, material, linguistic, momentary, or permanent things. They can be chosen or woven with a narrative to convey something. Riveted by material with a physical base, artists at times embark on their own practice. Sometimes a work of art explicitly demonstrates the fabric of abstract thoughts and ideas, masking the material’s flesh. At times the material is the key to locking or unlocking a door. By the way, there is another type of material. It has no volume or form and does not resort to any category for measurement. How it can be fastened, how much of it is consumed, and how it can be manifested are unpredictable. That is the material the audience employs. Can an artwork feel what kind of spectator looks at it or what kind of viewer approaches it? An artist can reduce the audience to zero or raise it from the position of a listener to that of a speaker like the subject of gaze in modernism to corporeal subject in the postmodern era. The artwork, however, makes use of the audience’s material, going beyond his or her merely observable reactions. An artwork that stems from an artist’s internal motive tends to draw in the audience’s inner resources. This exhibition began from counseling organization Growing Mom’s statement about how the premise of what takes place in each individual’s inner self derives from the difference between the “materials” he or she are born with. It focuses on artworks that use all kinds of materials to meet the audience’s more infinitely diverse inner materials. Lee Byungchan seems to use as many physical materials as he can, employing things such as wrapping vinyl, strings of beads, LED, and motor. His internal motive pulls in every sensible element and is like a spouting comment. Lee embraces and unmasks the true nature of consumer capitalist society rather than filtering or refining it as an overflowing factor in his work. Some audience approach it by actively reacting to the stimulus he represents or expresses through an aggressive exploration while others internally look it over at arm’s length. Even though she employs the same packing material, Sungim Choi moves in a direction that does not amplify the material’s original sense and social meaning. The material Choi adopts through repetitive labor holds a more elemental inner emotion. Kyung Hwa Shon also assumes an attitude to internally arrange a wide variety of external stimuli. Her works titled Psychogeographic Abstract Landscapes were interpretations of main big cities. When asked about what internal material was adopted, Shon chose “exploratory excitability” from the list of 21 different kinds of inner materials like Lee Byungchan did. Unlike Lee who accepted the stimuli from the urban environment and expressed it as extravaganza like mirroring the spectacular scenes of the cities, Shon employed black and white geometric patterns like secret codes which are sensed, heard, and read to those who are trying to comprehend these idioms. Hyun Cho more directly asks what materials the audience has in their relationships with others. The audience is bound to make a choice in a VR game. How does my contact with others define me in an era when the body’s senses are restricted by the concept of “untact” as a code? Is it still dependent on inborn inner social materials? Or, is my relation with others always a phenomenon with the development of mediums? Unlike Hyun Cho who faces a virtual figure with a controller in his hand, Chang Sung Eun’s photographs feature real figures who show their backs. The audience cannot help becoming emotionally involved with them, even though their gazes are subject to distance. That is why her scenes show that the air in some spaces is no longer neutral the moment one’s body becomes involved in it. Ryu Biho has tackled the sites of social events that can no longer be neutral. He sometimes brings a natural space reminiscent of such a place into his videos. A gray fog-shrouded sea in one of his videos makes a landscape seem more existential and subjective by enveloping the viewer’s body outside the scene with the fog. In his video A Reverie in the Fog, he preserves the weight of social events and facts while covering individual emotions such as anxiety, fear, peace, and infinity. Flowing or swinging things have sentiments that are intrinsic to them. Woo Hannah has focused primarily on what looks like braided objects that are descending from the ceiling and suspended in the air. Her other works in which she rendered spatial scenes with a variety of elements lead the audience to weave an array of narratives while Buoy captures a moment that is like a starting point involving sensations and impressions immediately before a narrative begins. Unlike Woo’s work in which the twisting of a polished cloth with a high chroma provokes an ascending note, the movement of Jung Sungyoon’s thick black fur arouses a feeling of weightiness that is associated with descent. Jung’s work allows us to perceive the apparent direction of palpable power in accordance with gravity but as it slowly moves around via a motor set in the ceiling and causes some uncertain movements as if in water, some viewers feel inner desire while others sense fleeting lyricism in his work. The existence of the audience obviously emanates from an artwork. There is an artwork and there is the audience. The one that closes the last door, however, is the audience. More accurately, it is something within the audience. The material of the audience that is invisible yet obviously exists as another element forges the experience and meaning of an artwork. The materials of the artist and the audience bring about the multipronged meaning of an artwork in an open fabric, generating a broad spectrum of experience. Even the artwork that speaks by itself uses the materials hovering in the space because a gallery, the place where the audience stands, is actually a psychological space. Both the artwork and the audience use each other as material. This exhibition is intended to interpret each one’s use of the other as material couched in the language of interchanges and interactions between an artwork and a viewer as well as between viewers.