"Are we not touched by the same breath of air which was among that which came before? Is there not an echo of those who have been silenced in the voices to which we lend our ears today?"

 -Walter Benjamin, 『Theses on the Philosophy of History』-

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There is an eye that crosses space-time beyond reality. GalleryJJ is delighted to present Angelus Novus, a solo exhibition by a world-renowned media artist, Yook Keun Byung. Yook was invited to Kassel Documenta in 1992 as the second Korean artist after Nam June Paik, with his most celebrated work that shows on a monitor an eye that stares out from the inside of a burial mound. This marked his artistic value in the major art scene of the world. He has also been considered one of the greatest media artists after Nam June Paik, receiving the ZKM Video Art Award.

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Yook focuses on the relationships between nature, history, and humanity, transforming them into an environment where digital images, sounds, and installations are well orchestrated. With the essence of life—an eye that stares at the civilized world—he uses the gaze as a medium to question memory and documentation, history and life, and ultimately the fundamentals of the universe.

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His work with media varies greatly. It encompasses video, audio, installation, photography, drawing, and performance, demonstrating his versatility and freedom in media genres. Yook Keun Byung: Angelus Novus showcases his video and painting works. His unique collage technique in the new paintings exhibits how the lineage of his principal concept has been reinvented.

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He composes images of the remarkable events that he has directly or indirectly experienced. This puts reality on another level, where the artist's imagination is composed as an image. His persistent gaze, which seeks to capture the finest details of the world, has now been recorded and expressed on canvas. Yook’s work begins with the concept of the eye. His video installation of eyes at Documenta has been the basis of his work, comprehensively exploring the concept and figure of the eye and its gaze. Now his icon, the enormous eye’s gaze, embodies his unique philosophy. His eye is both physical and mental, capable of recognition and expression. As the title Rendezvous suggests, it is about meeting with the gaze that encompasses the past to the future and the history, the strata of time. This rationale on transcendental time engages with both past inception and the most cutting-edge technologies.

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He attempts to reach beyond our vision where the East and the West, life and death, and reality and virtuality meet. Perhaps the gaze collects in one ultimate singularity – the fundamental of existence. Benjamin once said that such contradictory values like the primitive and civilization, or dream and reality are not about dichotomy but the same ambivalence inherent in the present. Similar to his argument, Yook shows that through a sudden encounter with such a dialectic image, we can confirm that the past can have a new meaning in the present.

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/SURVIVAL IS HISTORY

The new painting work presents real objects like photos and natural entities on canvas directly. Accidentally stopping at the Historical Museum in Berlin, he encountered a thread of history that was particularly touching, which he then documented and projected in his style. The photo of a boy in Survival is History is an indicator of that day in history, but at the same time, it has now been constructed into a new present reality. This kind of photo collage seems like a prolongation of video documentaries, Survival is History in 1995 and 2006, where they deal with the survival and history of mankind.

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Historical truth is bound to disperse unless persistently summoned by us. Life will find its direction by the encounter of the past and the present, and the confrontation and connection of images. Images and events from the past already contain traces of what is coming forth. Yook perpetually seeks identity and attempts to richly understand the present through history. For him, history exists for the present.

Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, which Benjamin used as an allegory to understand history, comes to mind. The angel is illustrated as if he wants to distance himself from what he is staring at. The angel wants to stay to recall the dead and to combine what has shattered. We pass by a lot of things unseen.

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/THE SOUND OF LANDSCAPE

The Sound of Landscape unravels the narratives of humans, the city, or nature in a landscape type. It is the landscape of all creation of the universe that he wants to pay attention to every single voice. His personal narrative becomes a part of history and circulates. All texts embedded on the surface like cryptic function as the traces of his thought.

His recent interest in natural history rather than mankind is influenced by his current dwelling condition. He collects withered winter plants from a field next to his studio and imbues new life into them in his new collage works. Those plants seem dead but come alive in spring. The obvious fact that the withered grass also has life approaches us impressively. He messages us not to forget that even a single leaf has its own history and universe. This recalls his previous photography documenting each time frame of grass. His notion of ‘though dead not yet died’ parallels with his previous work The Sound of Landscape + Eye for Field, which shows a burial mound form. A burial mound is a house for the dead. Although the physical disappears, the mental remains. The eye that stares outward is a meditation on death, rebirth, and the wheel of life. To see means to live since ancient times.

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/NOTHING

NOTHING is a highly moderated video work where sound is muted to allow viewers to see the invisible wind quietly and meditatively. It is one of a series where he captures moments in nature, such as wind, snow, or rain. The past time of that wind blowing is preserved as a beautiful, meditative moment in the present.

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He historicizes even the rendezvous moments with wind or grass. According to Henri Bergson, the present already contains the past and future, and everything changes in the present, which is the fundamental of the universe. We know we exist through the experiences and feelings we have collected. He believes that art is meant to express such things as the wind, which always exists and can be felt but is invisible.

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The exhibition conveys the raw energy from the tranquil imageries and their infinite potential and transformability within themselves. His work concept becomes, therefore, unique in the world of flamboyant techniques and images. By sharing Yook’s gaze on the large flow of history or the universe within nugacity, we can step closer to his seemingly uncomfortable works.

Juyeon Kang, GalleryJJ Director

translated by Brett Lee

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