Artists Interpret Directions, Colors
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
How does one interpret directions in art?
This was the challenge posed to five artists, who participated in the on going ``5 Spaces, 5 Colors'' exhibit at the Moran Museum of Art, Namyangju, Gyeongju Province.
Sculptor Jeong Hyun, photographer Hong Seong-do, metal print artist Kim Hong-sik, sculptor Lee Jae-hyo and media artist Baruch Gottlieb were invited to ``interpret the five directions, the traditional concept of space in the Orient'' with their works.
Well-known art critics Yoon Bum-mo, Jeong Jun-mo, Choi Yeol, Choi Tae-man and Cho Eun-jung, personally chose each of the artists in the exhibit.
In the exhibition catalogue essay, Cho said the concept of direction is grounded in the colors representing them. ``East, west, south and north as blue, white, yellow, red and black colors respectively attempt to hunt up the works that are mainly painted with those colors, and then derive the image world and materials of the specific work from the concepts of direction in order to apply them in their understanding,'' Cho said.
South, represented by the color red, is assigned to Gottlieb, who is a media artist and assistant professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of Communications and Arts.
His exhibition ``Labour of Light'' has two parts, one room with windows covered with red sheets to create a reddish glow, and another room where the only light comes from the projector. The projector shows a loop of video clips seemingly in random order. However, the clips are played depending on the movement of the people in front of the projector, which is equipped with a sensor.
The film follows the stages of construction of the room's walls. Instead of appearing in the film, Gottlieb hired an actress to play the role of the artist who interacts with the actual workers.
``I try to problematize the basic communication that technological media provides us with. Inside this very natural, visceral communication are thousands of people's work, the people who make the cameras and people who make the projector… Even if the images are easy to understand, I want to have another richness to it, like the globalized human relationship,'' he told The Korea Times.
Art critic Cho said Gottlieb is on the frontline of ``networking art'' or all art that connects people. ``What Gottlieb tried to show the audience through the release of colors to the space is the visualization process of the power that allows the existence of humans, which in turn is symbolized as south, red and sun,'' Cho said.
For sculptor Lee Jae-ho, east symbolized by the color blue is found in the vitality of wood. His huge sculptures, made of wooden logs and iron, immediately convey power and beauty.
Chung Hyun interpreted north, based on the concept of black, by creating rough dark, stone sculptures. Kim Hong-sik, who was assigned the color white, conveyed her feeling of alienation in foreign countries with her engravings on stainless steel panels.
Yellow is the color assigned to Hong Sung-do, whose photographs raised the question of the medium's power in reproducing reality.
The exhibit runs through March 30. Visit www.moranmuseum.org or call (31) 594-8001.