정원에서의 죽음으로 현대사회의 삶을 읽는 정원사와 현대미술작가들
참여작가ㅣ여다함, 이대길, 이솝

블루메미술관은 정원문화를 해석하는 시리즈 5번째 전시로 <The Sun is Going Home>을 기획하였다. 해가 '지는' 것이 아니라 집으로 '돌아가는' 것이라는 전시제목처럼 정원사 그리고 현대미술작가들과 인간조건으로서 죽음에 대한 관점과 태도를 나누고자 한다. 정원이 품고 있는 자연의 순환원리에서 삶의 지향점을 찾으며 3명 참여작가들의 설치, 사진, 영상 8점 작품들은 팬데믹의 현대사회에서 죽음의 문제를 다시 읽어보고자 한다. 죽음이 산업화되고 있다. 인류의 노화는 사회적 문제로 인식하나 죽음은 피하고 해치워야 할 어떤 것이 되었다. 20세기 초부터 죽음은 의학화 되어 죽음의 섬뜩한 광경, 냄새, 소리는 모두 시야에서 사라졌다. 환자와 노인은 요양시설로 보내져 사회안에서 죽음은 상당히 오랫동안 감출 수 있게 되었고 죽음은 장례 대행 서비스에 의해 신속하고 깔끔히 처리된다. 현대사회에서 우리는 죽음의 어떤 측면으로부터도 멀리 떨어져 있다. 죽음을 희미하게 만드는 것은 현대의 문화가 해체, 부패, 불완전함을 부정하기 때문이다. 일상은 영원한 젊음과 건강을 향해 있다. 이 전시는 불완전함을 전제로 하는 정원에서 죽음을 이야기하고자 한다. 식물이 태어나 죽고 사라지는 모든 과정의 아름다움을 포용하는 ‘자연주의 정원’의 담론을 통해 죽음을 오래 감추고 빠르게 처리하며 다시 삶을 소외시켜오는 현대사회의 문제들을 생각해보고자 한다. 이대길 정원사는 평생 포장재를 밟고 살아가는 도시환경에서 흙의 부재가 죽음으로부터 포장하고 외면한 우리의 삶을 이야기하고 있음을 말하고, 여다함은 이불처럼 매일 삶의 한면으로 붙어있는 죽음, 거울과 향처럼 실제의 틈 사이에 존재하며 삶을 비추고 있는 죽음의 일상성을 논한다. 이솝은 반려동물의 죽음을 기록한 사진작업들로 죽음에 관한 추상적인 논의를 물질의 차원과 순환의 과정으로 끌어내린다. 죽음과 우리가 맺는 관계를 바꿀 필요가 있다. 좋은 삶을 위해 육체적, 정서적 과정으로서 죽음이 ‘알려져야’ 하고, ‘돌보아져야’ 한다 말한다. 창조도 파괴도 끊임없는 순환속에서 행하는 자연의 거대한 작업에 연결되어 있는 정원과 정원일안에서 자기자신을 자연과 분리해 왔듯 죽음을 삶에서 부정하고 떼어놓는 현대의 문화를 돌아보고자 한다. ‘한창 살아가는 중에도 우리는 이미 죽어가고 있다(Media vita in morte sumus).’ 생명과 삶의 본질에 다가가고자 하는 정원사와 예술가의 눈을 통해 인간조건으로서 죽음에 대한 관점과 태도를 나누고자 한다.

북큐레이션ㅣ라비브북스
후원ㅣ한국문화예술위원회
기획ㅣ김은영
교육 및 홍보ㅣ김소영, 허은, 신은률
촬영 및 디자인ㅣ한아름, 박도현
진행ㅣ고다현, 이회남
글ㅣ김은영
도록 디자인ㅣ김일래, 정인혜
사진ㅣ박현욱

Life in Contemporary Society Read in Terms of Death in the Garden
Participating artistsㅣDaham Yo, Daegil Lee, Aesop


Death is being industrialized. Aging is deemed a social issue, but death has been something to eschew or remove. As death was ‘medicalized’ in the early 20th century, “all the gruesome sights, smells, and sounds of death were removed from view.” As the invalid and elderly are sent to sanatoriums, “death could be something to be concealed” and handled swiftly and neatly by funeral services. In contemporary society, we keep all aspects of death at the distance. The reason why death means nothing is because contemporary culture denies decomposition and imperfection. The everyday seeks youth and health. This exhibition is designed to touch on death. It intends to address problems in contemporary society in which our lives are marginalized by masking death and handling it promptly through discourse on a naturalistic garden embracing the processes of plants as they are born, die, and vanish. Daegil Lee, a gardener who is inextricably bound up with what is revealed in the soil such as fresh plants and animated insects, as well as what is concealed under the soil, states that contemporary society’s isolation from earth brings about a divorce from death. Death in nature is part of the cycle of life, and earth has all the aspects of its beginning and end. The absence of earth in the urban environment (inhabitants here live in paved areas during their entire life) enables us to witness our lives wrapped and disregarded by death. Lee as an artist who has always faced the really living and really dying in the garden vertically stands the abandoned artificial flowers whose extinction is not allowed due to human desire for life. Beings that cannot wane with time seem to have forfeited their right to wither. His Tower of Babel resembles a human character that is not allowed to lie down on the land and has to always stand. In contrast to the Tower of Babel that pays tribute to life in vain, Daham Yo’s Tomb That Will be Broken Tomorrow is horizontal like the earth. To Yo, a blanket is "a thing that remembers what happened after I fell asleep." The time of slumber, during which the conscious falls asleep and one turns over, is considered a time for practicing death. When undergoing the death we cannot experience in advance and grope its traces, is it approximate to something like a flexible mass caught by its corners or something like a blanket with one single layer? Yo’s other work Incense Smoke states that the nature of death probably approximates that of smoke, commenting on the banality of death, the other side of life. After lighting incense, it burns with smoke and scent and then is reduced to ashes. Since the two have no size or form, we cannot realize where they are and remove them. Is death closely enclosing me like incense? Death feels like a chasm in the real space dominated by life in Mirror in which a performer wanders around mountains, fields, and the waterside carrying a mirror. Invisible deaths such as layers, chasms, encircling like a net, and masses are in the category of life in which a form of death can be assumed. Death becomes more physical in Aesop’s work that records a companion animal’s death. Aesop, who didn’t euthanize her dog and let it die a natural death documented all the changes in form, smells, tactile sensations her old companion dog underwent when suffering from dementia and physical frailty. Death recovers its continuity, not being severed or divorced from life through the actions of the living body that passes into death, unveiling it with the camera’s eye capturing and amassing situations and sensations. Aesop’s work embraces the time of condolence in contemporary society that gives the funeral a lick and a promise, just like “dying is not cared of if death is not cared of”. Aesop’s work makes us see death in the same category of life, bringing any abstract discussion on death down to the dimension of a material and cyclic process. It is necessary to change our relationship with death. Death should be ‘known’ and ‘taken care of’ in terms of a physical and emotional process for a better life. This exhibition is intended to examine contemporary culture that denies death and isolates it from life in a garden where both creation and destruction are associated with nature’s grand project. “In the midst of life we are in death” (Media Vita in Morte Sumus). We intend to share perspectives and attitudes toward death as a human condition through the eyes of the gardener and the artist who try to realize the nature of life and living. The sun is not going down but going home. We have to see the death of humans as part of the cycles of nature.