by Andy St. Louis

**This review appeared in redacted form on page 18 in Eloquence Magazine (April 2011)

Pop music is a universal language with common currency and mass appeal the world over. It brings people together in its voicing of the human condition, stirring our hopes and dreams, consoling us in times of hardship, tugging at our heartstrings, and simultaneously offering a necessary escape from our most entrenched longings. This escape is always temporary, however—a condition that points at the nature of pop songs themselves. Their shelf life is limited and subject to the shifts in taste and hunger expressed by our society. At their best, pop songs set to words the sentimentality of our common cultural heritage.

Pop Song--Crazy Love (2006)

Bae Young-whan—whose rise to prominence began 15 years ago with his Pop Song series (1997-2002)—is the subject of a new mid-career survey entitled ‘Song for Nobody’ at PLATEAU. The human condition, reflected in pop music and similarly universally accessible cultural referents, is the subject of his captivating and often enigmatic work which uses a collective visual vernacular to convey messages contradictory to our culturally-conditioned preconceptions. In his Pop Song works, Bae repurposes the conventionally romantic and sentimental stylings of the genre to draw attention to the lives of people surviving on the margins of society. Developed over the course of three solo exhibitions early in the artist’s career, in ‘Song for Nobody’ these works are displayed in the exhibition’s very first section, and rightly so; the entirety of Bae’s artistic production has evolved from his initial consideration of pop songs as a mode of examining ourselves in relation to a larger social system, and the Pop Song series provides a crucial context for the artist’s later work.

The exhibition is prefaced with the artist’s newest work, Golden Ring—A Beautiful Hell (2012). This piece serves as an overture to ‘Song for Nobody’ and is a fitting distillation of the artist’s psychological development during his career thus far. Installed in the center of PLATEAU’s airy glass-enclosed atrium, this gilded boxing ring (constructed at roughly 1/3 scale) proposes a meditation on emptiness; not only in terms of the void enclosed by its ropes, but also in the obstacles to interpretation it presents as a stand-alone object. The atrium, which houses Rodin’s monumental bronzes The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais, provides an unmatched setting for this type of contemplation. The space itself is a postmodern cathedral of sorts, and Golden Ring its high altar, albeit one absolved of any commonly-held belief system. Just as the moral of a fable cannot be fully appreciated until the story has been read, Golden Ring realizes its full expression only in the context of the exhibition as a whole.

Golden Ring--A Beautiful Hell (2012)

The latter half of the exhibition, which includes works from 2010 to the present, differs considerably from the rest of the show, and reveals the artist shifting his gaze ever inward in contemplation of his own humanity. This is the nature of any mid-career survey of an artist such as Bae, at a crossroads in his artistic practice and seeking new avenues of expression. In fact, this uncertainty in direction is one of the most captivating aspects of the exhibition, and it would be misguided to classify the artist’s oeuvre according to any single interpretation. Nevertheless, the exhibition literature offers up the following interpretation of the show’s allegorical title, ‘Song for Nobody:’ “a sincere ode to those marginalized ‘nobody’ [sic] in our society.” This is the curatorial equivalent of claiming one pop song to be representative of all pop music, rejecting the inescapable brevity that is essential to the health and continued relevance of the genre as a whole. The exhibition is more than a humble ‘ode;’ it is a ‘theme and variations,’ revealing the full range of Bae’s avenues of inquiry in search for a more perfect expression of his unique artistic vision.

If you can’t be bothered to browse the comprehensive listings and would rather see the redux, here’s the SAF March Top 5:

Dansaekhwa: Korean Monochrome Painting @ NMOCA/Gwacheon

Suh Do-ho: Home Within Home @ Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

Nayongim & Gregory Maas: There is No Beer in Hawaii @ artclub1563

Choi Ki Seog @ Gallery2

Michael Craig-Martin @ Gallery Hyundai

As always, head over to our listings page for the complete lineup (click HERE).

Form follows function—Originally fashioned in 1896 by the American architect Louis Sullivan, this succinct, alliterative catchphrase would go on to define the course of 20^th century modernist architecture and design. Although considered little more than an empty cliché with limited contemporary applications among today’s creative circles, Sullivan’s mantra nonetheless continues to manifest itself in the groupthink of society as a whole; its pervasive effects have fundamentally influenced how we perceive the world around us and make ordered sense of it.

Anabel Quiriarte and Jorge Ornelas are two artists who operate as a single creative unit. True to the dialectical framework that informs its production, their work invites direct engagement with viewers and demonstrates a discursive faculty befitting its manner of creation. “Structures and Fragments” at One and J. Gallery presents this process at its apotheosis, in which even the most mundane objects—pencils, paper, scissors, books and cassette tapes—transcend their face value and perform a dressing-down of the conventional ways we comprehend the world.

Drawing Structure 3, 2012. Watercolor on paper. Polyptych 6 pieces (Courtesy One and J. Gallery)

In their watercolors, oils and installations, the Mexican artist duo Quiriarte + Ornelas base their consideration of objects on direct and unadulterated visual experience. Not only do they refrain from a functionalist approach to objects à la Sullivan; they shun interpretive readings altogether. Their relationship with objects is one in which function follows form, a back-to-basics framework almost always used to ascribe meaning to objects that are unfamiliar or foreign to our sensibilities. In spite of this, Quiriarte + Ornelas approach the very things they understand most intimately—the pencils, sketchbooks and other art-making tools they use day in and day out—with just such a methodology. Fraught with banality though these objects may be, they are not free of interpretation. Indeed, the more commonplace the object, the more difficult it is to mentally separate its physical attributes from the connotations they suggest. In order to effectively cancel out these connotations and isolate the image of an object from its corresponding idea, Quiriarte + Ornelas physically alter its appearance while retaining its essential nature as identifiable objects, reconfiguring objects as either fragments or structures.

“Structures and Fragments” does not require conceptual heavy lifting for the disinclined, however. Much of the exhibition is, in fact, playful; given its subject matter—from balls of crumpled paper and cassette tapes spiked through with pencils, to piles of books haphazardly strewn this way and that, to hundred of pencil splinters scattered on the floor—one might even go so far as to call the exhibition “whimsical” (or at the very least, “quirky”). The paintings are characterized by an almost insultingly direct manner of representation (naturalistic but well short of hyperrealism) as well as a compositional affinity for isolating their subjects within otherwise blank canvases, eliminating all traces of the figure/ground relationship. This aesthetic sensibility sheds light on the conceptual underpinnings of exhibition itself; though technically well-executed, these paintings convey a detached objectivity that renders them unable to meaningfully connect with viewers on the basis of their images alone. Their agency as images derives from the process of their creation rather than its results, blurring the boundaries between art-making and art in its own right.

Pencil 4, 2011. Oil on canvas (Courtesy One and J. Gallery)

The simplest of these constructions, unsurprisingly, are also the most visually arresting. Using nothing more than pencils speared through balls of crumpled paper, Quiriarte + Ornelas reach the apotheosis of their conceptual aims in their Drawing Structure series (2012). Although structural simplicity of the constructions allowing the brain to perceive the structure according to its component parts, efforts to infer any meaning from their composite sum is stymied. This cognitive conundrum works in reverse in the artists’ Pencil series (2011). Here, the “construction” comprises splinters of shattered pencils arranged at random on a flat surface, offering fragments presented independently their correspondent whole. Again, Quiriarte + Ornelas dispatch with the relative agency demanded of these constructions by the brain and instigate a reevaluation of tacit assumptions about meaning, context and form.

The exhibition is about more than just looking; it is about using what we see (rather than what we know) to inform our relationships with objects. Once the objects in “Structures and Fragments” are reconfigured in ways that neutralize their accepted functionality, they can be considered in a new light—one independent of outside interpretations. Sullivan’s “form follows function” is revealed to permit only a very narrow interpretation of most object, one which extends only as far as our preconceived impressions allow. When “function follows form,” as Quiriarte + Ornelas propose in this exhibition, the impressions of what we see are genuine and undistorted—objects as objects, and nothing more.

Structure: Wall 1, 2012. Watercolor on paper. Triptych (Courtesy One and J. Gallery)

The City of Art: New York, 1945-2000 @ 63 Sky Art Museum

Being: Debbie Han 1985-2011 @ Sungkok Museum

Lee Jin Han: Postmodernism of the Beholder–Landscape of the Concept @ Alternative Space LOOP

1958-Ecole de Paris @ Shinsegae Gallery

Q&O. Structures and Fragments @ One and J. Gallery

Take a look at the complete art forecast for February over at our listings page (click HERE).

Borderless @ 313 Art Project

Whanki Kim @ Gallery Hyundai

Area Park – Way of Photography: Finding an Album in Miyagi @ Atelier Hermes

Korean Abstract Painting: 10 Perspectives @ Seoul Museum of Art

Mina Cheon: Polipop @ Sungkok Museum of Art

For the complete listings, click HERE.

Burning Down the House (Alexander McQueen & Isabella Blow) (1996)

Seocho
22 November 2011 – 26 February 2012

Opening hours: Monday – Sunday, 11:00-19:00
Admission: 13,000 won
http://www.dlcseoul.com

By Andy St. Louis

David LaChapelle. The name doesn’t trigger the same immediate reaction that others–say, Annie Liebovitz, Juergen Teller, Baron Wolman, or even Terry Richardson–might. David LaChapelle. To some, portraits of rock stars and celebrities on hte cover of Rolling Stone may come to mind. To others,the more fashion-oriented covers of Vogue and Vanity Fair. To few does high-concept/socially critical photography come to mind (if, indeed, anything comes to mind at all). And yet, this photographer, who is still very much in mid-career (he is 48), is gaining renewed insternational respect as more than a one-trick pony with an eye for best-selling magazine cover shoots. “David LaChapelle in Seoul” at Seoul Arts Center is a veritable trove of of visual delights—at nearly 200 works, it is the most comprehensive selection of the prolific photographer’s work ever seen in Asia—revealing the astounding ways in which LaChapelle’s visual output has transformed since he became a professional photographer while still in high school.

The themes and subject matter in LaChapelle’s work have changed considerably over the years, from his early work shown at galleries in New York’s East Village in the 1980s, to his cover and editorial work for fashion and lifestyle magazines, and more recently, work that resonates with the artist’s withdrawal from the “world” and subsequent retreat to his current residence in a cabin in the rainforest. Despite the radical turns LaChapelle’s career has taken over the past two and a half decades, the threads running through his enormous catalogue of images remain true to his own deeply personal worldview. The work that results inevitably falls into one of these four broad categories: mass consumption, fame, religion and the human form.

While still in high school, a teenage LaChapelle was “discovered” by Andy Warhol who offered him a job taking photos for Interview magazine. One can only imagine the profound influence that the so-called “father of pop art” must have had on the up-and-coming photographer, and it is no surprise that much of LaChapelle’s work examines the material culture that was at the center of Warhol’s own artistic practice. With a constant eye toward society’s excessive consumption, LaChapelle wields both humor and gravity to injurious effect in his oblique criticisms of human nature, subverting social conventions by placing his subjects in fabricated surreal environments. His Inflatables series (2002) adopts a humorous tack in its variation on the USA’s bigger is better mentality, marooning fashion models in the grips of super sized household products seeking vengance on their consumers.  Other images appropriate disaster and devastation to reflect a converse approach to the topic of consumerism, such as LaChapelle’s Destructions series (2005), where haute couture is stripped of its visual appeal by scenes of death and tragedy.

The artist’s disdain for consumerism is no doubt wrapped up in the subject matter that dominated his early career. Indeed, the work he is perhaps most widely known for is his celebrity portrait portfolio—characterized by its images’ shock value, aesthetic intrigue and a hint of voyeurism—plays directly into the mass market for which it was produced. Eminem, Britney Spears, Madonna, Tupak Shakur, Lil’ Kim, Naomi Campbell, David Bowie, Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie, and Lady Gaga have all been received the “LaChapelle treatment” over the years, and the photographer’s primary focus on this subject matter for so much of his career had a direct effect on the way he looked at the world. Society’s fascination with—and interconnected reverence for—celebrity evoked by these defining images must have struck a discordant note in the photographer’s perception of humanity, evidenced by his gradual departure from this line of work and turn to a more critical line of inquiry.

LaChapelle frequently mobilizes religious imagery in his later work, mining its vast repository of ready-made mise–en–scènes for their characteristic formal qualities. This body of work, which largely dates from 2006 onward, abandons LaChapelle’s standard mode of social critique in favor of a much more subtle treatment of the issues revolving around veneration and piety. By appropriating ubiquitous religious motifs and reframing them in a modern context—Michelangelo’s Pietà, for instance, set in an archetypal children’s playroom, Courtney Love assuming the persona of the Virgin Mary (Heaven to Hell, 2006)—the photographer communicates a pervasive sense of not-quite-right-ness indicative of his own loss of faith in humankind itself. Though celebrity figures such as Love occasionally appear in these images, they serve only to underline the artist’s concern with the power of images and the currency they exert over society. Interestingly, the figures that occupy these works are much more gestural than those of LaChapelle’s earlier days, hinting at an aesthetic maturity and return to nature. Nude, contorted, and imbued with either unrestrained pathos or absolute tranquility, they signal a sea change in the photographer’s artistic motivation and intellectual investment in his work.

Of course, it is the body itself to which this visionary photographer has unremittingly devoted his lifework, and it is this most empathetic of all possible subject matter that has given the most back in return. LaChapelle’s understanding of the human form and eye for capturing it at its most superlative—sensuous, grotesque, endearing, menacing, and all manner of emotional states—will always be his trademark. He is not merely an image-maker, documenting the human condition through his unique perspective, he is a purveyor of desire itself. The photographs are just the tools; we, the very consumers of these images, are the true objects of the photographer’s manipulation. This creator-consumer interaction is rare in its reciprocity; the audience is at once a third-party observer as well as the very apotheosis of LaChapelle’s ideological questioning. The result is an ongoing dialogue between the  images (and by extension, the artist himself) and their audience that give this gargantuan exhibition its essential intimacy.

by Andy St. Louis

**This review appeared in redacted form on page 12 of Eloquence Magazine (December 2011)

Artsonje Center doesn’t organize many group exhibitions―typically only one per year―so when such a rarity does present itself, it’s best to take note. Meticulously curated and thoughtfully conceived, the new exhibition at Artsonje Center tackles a theme with increasing relevance to contemporary artists as each year passes. Working under the enigmatic title “City Within the City,” curators from samuso: (Seoul) and Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne) have created a diverse yet incisive platform within which visitors can engage with the larger questions surrounding cities and our roles as participants, observers or obstacles of urban development. This is socially-conscious curatorial programming; beyond pretty pictures and interesting concepts, “City Within the City” proposes a comprehensive look at the relationships between the urban landscape and city dwellers, keeping an eye to the way they have changed throughout history, resulting in the status quo.

The documentary impulse presents a strong current throughout the museum’s two floors of exhibition space, from “officially recognized” histories to first-person remembrances. This sliding scale of authenticity and historical potency reflects the negotiations between individuals and the cityscape that inspire the exhibition. Haegue Yang juxtaposes utopian apartment-tower fantasy with the banality of newsprint in her slide projection Dehors (2006). Ash Keating takes a similar tack in Zi Namsan Plus (2011), satirizing the grotesquery and sensationalism part and parcel of the visual language employed by Korea’s mega-developers. Yeondoo Jung does Yang and Keating one better, however, by going inside these very same structures and investigating―via an encyclopedic photo series of living rooms with nearly-identical floor plans (Southern Rainbow Seoul, 2011)―how Korean families subvert the dehumanizing effects of Korean residential architecture.

“City Within the City” charts hypothetical encounters with the urban environment as much as it does verifiable ones, providing ample possibility for more imaginative discourse with the show’s theme. Minouk Lim‘s three-channel video presents a series of idiosyncratic riverside encounters during a presumed Han River night cruise (S.O.S.-Adoptive Dissensus, 2009). This three-channel video installation engages the river not only in dialogue with the city, but also with the way individuals conceptualize ownership of civic space. In his short film Seoul Fiction (2010), Jun Yang exposes an emotional, surreal and highly personal conflict between city and countryside as experienced by an elderly Korean couple. In stark opposition to carefully constructed story lines and cinematic contrivances, Alicia Frankovich proposes an impromptu physical manifestation of city life in her brief but aggressive video installation Volution (2011). Somewhere between reminiscence and reaction, Frankovich explores notions of personal space and personal expression within the strictures of urban life, assuming the role of de facto archetype for the show’s curatorial imperative.

The exhibition is activated beyond the gallery’s interior spaces through projects by two Seoul-based artists collectives. Part-time Suite, nominated for the Hermès Korea Art Prize earlier this year, literally offers itself and its daily operations as a part of the exhibition. For their project SAMUSO Patch (2011), the collective sets up a temporary headquarters in a storeroom/garage nearby the museum and uses it as a base for its interventions, projects and film screenings. Adopting a more didactic approach, the group Listen to the City repurposes Artsonje Center’s ground-floor lounge/bookstore as a resource center for contentious urban development projects. In addition to this on-site content, Listen to the City is also offering its trademark Seoul Tours―alternative excursions aimed at reexamining sites of large-scale state-sponsored public works projects in and around Seoul―as well as organizing its 2nd annual Urban Film Festival.

Artsonje Center’s location in historic Bukchon, an historic and culturally rich enclave in Seoul rapidly succumbing to gentrification, lends the works inside the museum additional immediacy. Within its neighborhood, the museum itself acts as an accomplice in the very development that the exhibition (partly) condemns. Yet, this poignant truth adds further layers of complexity to be parsed from the dialectics advanced by this show; the physical and symbolic presence of the museum itself takes on the function of a meta-artwork, analyzed and encountered alongside the contents of its exhibition.

“City Within the City” Public Programs

Artist Talks

12 November/5pm – Alicia Frankovich, Ash Keating, Andrew McQualter
19 November/5pm – Abraham Cruzvillegas
17 Devember/5pm – Suyeon Yun

Urban Film Festival

18 November – 20 November/5pm daily
16 December – 18 December/5pm daily

(Abraham Cruzvillegas) Screening Program

10 December/5pm – Autoconstrucción (2009)

(Part-time Suite) Screening Program

26 November/6pm – Video Patchwork
22 December/6pm – Video Patchwork: Open Call

(Listen to the City) Writing and Drawing Workshop: North Korea, imagined by South Koreans

7 January 2012/4pm

Our top picks:

David LaChapelle @ Seoul Arts Center
Choi Dae Jin: HUMAN WORK @ Alt Space LOOP
Rho Jae Oon: Mulian Mulian @ Atelier Hermes
Candida Hofer @ Kukje Gallery
Junkhouse: Beautiful Mutants @ Gallery AURA flat
Minouk Lim: Liquide Commune @ PKM Gallery

For the complete list of this month’s exhibitions in and around Seoul, head over to our Listings page or CLICK HERE.

Our top picks:

Dan Perjovschi: The News After The News @ Total Museum of Contemporary Art
Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way @ PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art
Minouk Lim @ PKM Gallery
Hyunsoo Kim @ Doosan Gallery
Donghyun Son @ Gallery 2

Check out all this month’s listings on our listings page.

by Andy St. Louis

These days, it seems that a lot of “fine art” has lost that which for so long had defined it; namely beauty, a concept which is inherently impossible to consider objectively. Theories abound as to what makes an object, person or image beautiful, but in the end it all comes down to the emotional response automatically triggered as a result of certain combinations of rods and cones being activated on the retina. In the the nanoseconds before the brain begins to infer all sorts of data and mental assimilations from the content of an image, there is an intuitive—or reflex—appraisal that takes place instantaneously. Certain combinations of shapes and colors, arranged in certain compositional forms and dimensional formats, make us happy or sad, excited or lethargic, agitated or calm, all simply because of what they look like, not what they mean.

Anya Dennis, "Fortitude" (2010). Courtesy of the artist.

Though most visual artists don’t likely think along such scientific (read: deconstructionalist) lines, it’s easy to pick out the ones who justifiably might do just that. Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly, Jackon Pollock—all painters—as well as Anish Kapoor and Richard Serra—both sculptors—immediately come to mind, their work eschewing higher-order thinking in favor of what the Korean Zen master Seung Sahn would call “no-mind.” But to associate photographers with this school of aesthetic thought and artistic practice is no easy task; perhaps because photography is inherently a means of capturing “actuality” (fact, narrative, documentation) or perhaps because a photo represents the encapsulation of an instant whereas a painting or sculpture represents instead the culmination of an artist’s prolonged interaction with a medium. It would seem easier for painters and sculptors to explore, develop and cultivate such a direct emotional engagement with their artwork, given the sheer amount of time required to get it “just right,” working and struggling with it until it speaks the language of “no-mind.” So when one discovers photographs (apart from photograms à la László Moholy-Nagy) that speak this language, it’s best to take note.

Anya Dennis, "Ritual" (2010). Courtesy of the artist.

“The Color of Calm,” a solo exhibition by New York-based photographer Anya Dennis, is the impetus for precisely this sort of revelatory experience. Currently on view at the intimate Laughing Tree Gallery in Haebangchon, Dennis’s photos trigger a reflex sense of serenity, balance and calm. The power of suggestion, of course, plays not a small role in conditioning viewers to embrace a pre-rational way of looking and abandon—or at least try to ignore—the free associations that create “mental noise.” And yet, the whole show could do without any title whatsoever and would still speak the same way to its viewers.

Created over a period of two months in the summer of 2010, the photos selected for this, the artist’s first international exhibition, reflect the ways in which color, beauty and emotion are inextricably linked. In this case, Dennis explores this relationship using the color green as her point of entry, a color full of latent symbolism via notions of renewal, growth, nature and vitality. While she certainly taps into the natural environment in some her subject matter, more often than not the color green finds its way into her photos innocently, or even subversively in some cases. In Ritual, for instance, one of the more overtly portraiture-oriented photos in the exhibition, green appears as an ever-so-faint layer of patinated moss on a red-brick background. Dennis’s attention to such subtleties in her photos reflects her uncanny ability to capture images that luxuriate in color, contrast and composition—all of which induce a sensory response rather than a cognitive one.

Anya Dennis, "In Awe" (2010). Courtesy of the artist.

Dennis’s photographs are indeed beautiful, but casual or sceptic observers may entertain internal monologues something along the lines of: “These are just beautiful vacation photos in nice frames … If I were in [insert tropical Southeast Asian country], I’m sure I could take pictures that are just as good as these … What’s so special about these images?” Such a self-assured statement, however, is hopeful at best, especially when taking into account Dennis’s years of honing her craft and her artistic process. A self-taught photographer, Dennis’s eyes were metaphorically opened during an extended stay in Accra, Ghana in 1997, while still a student at Clark Atlanta University. Her travels across the African continent since that initial encounter provided her with the “blank canvas” she needed to explore the relationship between culture and identity and deepen her commitment to photography as a means of “capturing the soul.”

It is her most recent body of work, however—created in Bali, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan—that truly testifies to Dennis’s having fine-tuned her craft to a level that many only dream of. Her ability to capture images that penetrate to the very essence of her subjects and enrapture viewers by appealing to their eyes—the windows to the soul—rather than their rational sensibilities sets her apart from even the most prolific “travel photographers:” a title altogether inadequate for someone of Dennis’s caliber. In her artistic practice, Dennis works along thematic—as opposed to specific—lines; instead of setting out to photograph monks, she looks instead for manifestations of spirituality. Or rather, she doesn’t go looking for anything at all, but has an eye towards sights, stories and situations that resonate with the emotions, concepts and sensations that she is constantly exploring. The result is a deeply personal body of work that can’t help but captivate whosoever comes in contact with them. This expert eye, in synchrony with the intimacy and immediacy indelibly inscribed in her images, confidently locates Dennis’s recent work alongside any cover of National Geographic.

Anya Dennis, photographer, and Adam Lofbomm, Laughing Tree Gallery curator

The installation at Laughing Tree Gallery—images all of one uniform shape and orientation—does away with all distractions, embracing the simplicity of the gallery’s physical space that encourages the mindful engagement that Dennis’s work demands. The sequencing of different images in the show, itself executed in a highly conscious manner, only further serves to facilitate genuine interaction with the images individually and as a progressive and comprehensive “calming” unit.

“I don’t choose my images,” says Dennis, true to form and her unique way of seeing the world, “my images choose me.” A bold claim perhaps, and yet it speaks great truth about her work; like Pollock and indeed, the entire company of what may be aptly called “no-mind” artists in Western art history, Dennis’s photographs reflect a oneness of spirit with her subjects that speaks a universal language.