1945–2009 Online Platform for Korean Modern and Contemporary Art

Artist of the Year 2003 Kwak Duckjun "The Life and Art of Kwak Duckjun"

Kwak Duckjun was born in Japan. His parents went to Japan during the Joseon Dynasty, which was under Japanese colonial rule, settled in Kyoto and had six children, including him. Although Kwak was born in Japan, he grew up as a Korean. It is an irony to which he was destined that he perceived Korea as his motherland, but he had not actually experienced Korea. He perceived his own motherland through the eyes and stories of others in the exclusive environment of Japan while being unable to feel it through his own senses. Imperialistic Japan did not leave the little boy alone. He already knew what it is to be a ‘Korean’ in Japan when he was bullied by his Japanese schoolmates. He perceived Joseon as his ‘motherland’ to go back to as soon as she was liberated. Japan was his home, and yet it could never be his home. On the other hand, his motherland, perceived by the ‘difference,’ which was given by such an origin of his birth, could not be his home either. After the 1945 Liberation of Korea, his family did not make it to Korea, and Japan in the aftermath of WW II did not have the capacity to embrace a little Korean boy from Korea. As such, history obscured the ‘identity’ of the artist and led him to a constant questioning of his ‘origin’ across the historical and social borderline between Japan and Korea. He intended to find the answer to this question within his life, and he decided to “filter the gloomy destiny” given to him “through intense artistic consciousness and methods” when he survived from pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of twenty. It is either to weather away or to assert myself so as to secure my human individuality by defining a rule. The ‘original landscape’ that has been formed from my infanthood, set by my birth in Japan, will not cease dominating me. -From the artist’s notes- As one can infer from these notes, his birth, childhood environment and social status have prescribed Kwak’s lifelong artistic consciousness. As a Japanese-born Korean, he has been a member of a minority group in both societies, has been isolated and has had to prove his own being and identity. And his artistic view reflects such an environment of his, and it can be characterized as follows: One: He coherently interrogates the ‘origin of being’ and ‘identity’ of the individual. Although he plays variations on themes such as ‘the relationship between society and the individual’, ‘the difference between information and cognition’ and ‘the distance between media images and individual thought’, the obsessive searching for identity conditioned by the ‘original landscape’ is never abandoned. Two: Kwak in fact mentioned that “while assuming the role of a witness to his or her time, an artist is in a position to inquire into the zeitgeist,” but he performs this role from the ‘viewpoint of a bystander.’ He testifies to his time through his artworks and events of various forms, yet his cynical approach prefers scraping gestures to aggressive participation or expression. The bystander constantly picks holes in the values stipulated by the times and society. He raises a question about what one takes for granted and requests him or her to rethink, yet he does this from a certain distance. Three: He never directly delivers it. Maintaining a certain distance, his ‘humor and irony’ stimulate the mind of a viewer all the more intensely than directly delivered messages do. Caricatured by the artist, existential and intricate themes nestle close to viewers, and through this approach the universal meaning paradoxically rebounds. As a minority member, he chose to touch the core through his inimitable sense of humor. Four: Many of his works take a structure that resembles his social position, in which heterogeneous iconographies co-exist but are unable to assimilate to one another. And his use of this structure mirrors Kwak’s intention to discover their identity in such an uncomfortable relation. In addition, the pertinent repetition of a single image on one picture plane or the series of images repeated on the entire plane makes one compulsively perceive the meaning. And this facilitates viewers’ understanding of the essence of the meaning and makes them “repudiate the ordinariness by reiterating the repetition.” Five: He occupies a unique position in the scenes of contemporary Korean and Japanese art. According to the interview with the artist, it seems that he did not establish a close artistic relationship with the Korean art community.1 His work shows no direct influence of the experimental tendency of contemporary Korean art that started in the 1960s and of Monochrome Art of the 1970s. Kwak studied Japanese traditional-style painting during his school years, but it had little effect on his work. Anti-art movement, Neo-expressionism and Conceptualism were dominating the then Japanese art scene, but it seems that his origin as a Korean did not make it easy for him to be engaged in those art movements. Apart from the contemporaneous artistic currents, his art was establishing its own independent style even if he was in fact influenced by the then artistic tendencies. As examined so far, the ‘original landscape’ has regulated his obsessive searching for ‘identity’, and the agony caused by his birth in Japan permeates throughout his oeuvre in diverse artistic modes. His sense of humor and unique composition make, however, his works seem friendly and affable. Yet, the viewing of it soon becomes uncomfortable since it is comprehensible one moment and incomprehensible the next moment; it is enjoyable, but not quite. His works are witty and comic, yet the images appearing over and over in them carry considerable weight. His experience of ‘power and institution’ and ‘the relationship between human beings that derives from social information and desires’ assert that “there exists an inevitable rupture between human beings and between the individual and society, and that subtle and pre-determined distance can be spoken only in paradoxical and incomparable words.” In front of his works of pleasantry and humor, individual viewers confront their solitude and the weight of their destiny that history imposes on them. And this weight is shared by Koreans abroad who have been forgotten in the shadow of modern and contemporary history of Korea. 1. Weathering Weathering 971 in which his artistic oeuvre is sutured into one work facilitates one’s observation of his entire artistic oeuvre as it exemplifies the course of his lifelong artistic quest. The image in the center originates from his Self-portrait 78. The image on the left shows the use of rich colors and painterly composition that he practiced in the 1960s. Executed in the same manner, the image on the right shows soldiers in a battle on a shiny surface. In the lower part of the picture there is a copy of Time magazine lucidly painted. These three sections are practically separated from one another and show no connection. Only a circle or a square is placed across the picture planes or on the boundary where the picture planes meet while ignoring the borderlines of these idiosyncratic images. This circular shape visually implies a certain connection between these three images. Reminding one of the shape of a spacecraft or a part of the human body, the image on the left illustrates his artistic mode of the second half of the 1960s. After recovering from tuberculosis, he worked at a Western-style painting studio to make ends meet. The method used in the works of this period reveals his study of Japanese traditional painting and dyeing techniques. The use of white powder and ground sand endows the picture surface with a porcelain-like texture, and the lines that scratch produce organic shapes. The organically entangled image contains intense lyricism and mysterious life force while suggesting the curvilinear lines of the human body. In Smile of the Hypocrite, the light movement or the irregular pattern furnishes the picture surface with a microscopic variation, the lines engraved in a dyeing technique called ‘Sekidasi’ liberate the picture plane, and the use of acrylic paints endows the overall picture plane with translucency. A closer look at the works of this period reveals his frequent use of human faces across the picture plane. There hide images of facial features such as an eye and a mouth in abstract works as well, which shows the artist’s obsessive concern with the idea of ‘identity.’ In Smile at Night, the picture plane is packed with mask-like faces of a questioning look. Composed in a striking contrast, Image of Two Planes contains certain shapes, yet at the same time prevents one’s perception of them. It can be interpreted that this obsession with a face comes from the artist’s observation of it as a mirror to reflect upon himself. Having made a narrow escape from death, he came to reassess his life and identity and gave much thought to the life ahead. Maybe it is at this point that he started his concrete exploration of his double identity. The cynical nuances of the titles, especially, forecast what he pursues in the works afterwards, and his works of the early 1960s tell that Kwak had already perceived the distance invincibly present between society and the individual, between presence and absence and between information and thought, and realized the meaninglessness of communication. The solitude hidden beneath the caricatures of human figures and the entangling and repetition of a certain image have continued to be the underlying premise of Kwak’s art. The photographic image of a black and white figure in the center is borrowed from his Self-portrait 78. This video work of 1972 shows the artist’s uncannily distorted face having pressed upon the cracks of glass. Consisting of the consecutive photographic images of a crudely contorted face as his lips and nose self-tormentingly rubbed against plate glass, this work shows his face continuously changing depending on how the face touches the broken glass. At the start of the work, viewers cannot help laughing at the sight of the badly distorted face of a man. But as minutes accumulate, they start to feel ill at ease as they sense the artist’s stubborn intention to obsessively convey something. The gaze at the repetitive images of the hideous distortion of a face gradually fills the viewing room with an oppressive and heavy atmosphere, in which viewers come to find a lonely man confronting the world in an ugly, ludicrous and nonsensical manner to which viewers themselves are assimilated, and finally they discover their own portrait in the contorted face of a man. This work bears great significance to the artist that its invitation to the «Self-portraits Exhibition of Modern Art in Japan» gave the artist, who was earning a living by designing kimono, the freedom to professionally pursue his artistic career. The Japanese art community recognized him as an artist for the first time. The image on the right reminds one of his works produced since the 1980s that deal with the meaninglessness of the images reported by the mass media. Many of his works address the distance between information, especially the images carried by the mass media, and one’s cognition of it. At first glance, this work seems to convey a serious message. Yet, what we can see here is only the images that the mass media provides. When the armed FBI agents descend on a place, it is through the medium of Time magazine with a vivid red frame around its cover that we are informed of it. The coverage does not give us a chance to seek the truth of it. The news is already carved in our brain and we speak of it as a fact. This work parallels the Kwak Duckjun and Presidents series that uses the portrait appearing on the cover of Time magazine during every presidential election period of the U.S. This series is the most representative of his works that articulate the distance between information and one’s cognition of it. Clinton Kwak and Bush 2001 Kwak look like composite photographs on which the images of Kwak and U.S. Presidents are collaged. But in fact they are photographs of the artist holding a mirror and a copy of Time magazine: the mirror covers the lower half of the President’s face printed on the cover of Time magazine and his own face is reflected on the mirror. In the work the space is complicated by the back of the artist’s head, hands holding a mirror, and the background, and every element is connected at an oblique angle. Covering the mirror and the border of the magazine, the back of the head on the left contributes to the unification of the overall composition and simultaneously averts a simple composition. Although this series seems to contain a strong political message or social comment, Kwak assertively denies its origin as a political satire. Rather, it may be said that he attempted to expose the humor of nonsense, which can be caused by the distance present between information and one’s cognition of it. Time magazine is an important subject of his work. His decision to use the magazine is “because it is one of the most influential magazines.” In the same context, the choice of the U.S. Presidents came from his need for “a code that represents the world.” The nonsense conveyed in his works is used to “remind the lies that we tell everyday and to disclose the fact that the relation between the world and us is based on a fake world.” He declares that the relationship we have with the world is nothing but an illusion, and through the nonsense of a single face, which combines the face of the world and his own face, he lays bare our daily lies in a haughty talk of the presidential election and international politics. This series indeed created a great sensation in the art world. Time magazine has made a continuous appearance in his work as the object that epitomizes the information source that has the greatest influence on our daily life. 2. +, − = 0 The revelation of the existential nature of being through the distance between information and one’s cognition of it was already realized in various ways in the 1970s when Conceptual Art was incorporated into Kwak’s works. He challenged the entities and behaviors that are measurable in definite units and information and stated their falsehood and meaninglessness in his Weight-scale series. Installed at the Open-air Sculpture Garden of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (now MMCA), and consisting of ten scales piled up in the form of a pyramid, Ten Weight-scales renders nonsense of ‘what weighs is being weighed.’ One might want to relate this work to the objecthood emphasized by Japanese Mono-ha in that it uses industrial products of ready-made scales, but what the artist intends is something nonsensical. His ridiculing of the entity being weighed by self-purposive weighing reveals the meaninglessness of ‘measurement’ and the falsehood inherent in reproduced information. Unlike the Mono-ha, he is unbound to explaining the attributes of objects. Rather, his cynical perspective unfolds through the realm of nonsense, which is remotely related to ‘objecthood.’ Kwak’s inimitable artistic originality lies in his ability to visually embody an idea through the illogical process of ‘measuring for measurement’s sake.’ Through the scheme of nonsense, the artist mocks the falsehood of information and substantially ridicules the non-purposiveness of the world, which derives from the fact that what articulates the falsehood is the ‘fallacy’ to ‘bestow meaning’ upon ‘the meaningless.’ His A Measure and World Map Cut into 12 Equal Parts can be interpreted in the same context, and especially in his photographic works in which a tape measure is placed over a phone booth, a hanging lantern, a concrete wall, a staircase and so on, the measurement of ever-old objects with historicity sarcastically points out the nonsense of measuring the immeasurable entities such as history and memories. The artist is here laughing at meaningless conduct of the world all over again. His paradox targeted at these measuring apparatuses is conceptually intensified in 0 Weight-scale and Stone, in which a large rock is placed on a scale with wheels and its needle points to 0. Here, 0 indicates both 100 and 0, and this establishes the equation of ‘+, − = 0.’ In measurement, measuring units are indispensable, and those units are the product of geometrical thinking whose purpose is to reduce the world to numerical values, which are seemingly clear and distinct, yet the artist demonstrates that they are fictitious and meaningless products that ideas produce. The equation of ‘+, − = 0’ is also applied to his Event of Collecting Air at Mt. Hiei and Transporting It. This work consists of mailing the air collected at the summit of Mt. Hiei out to the museum staff and of the self-addressed postcards returned by them, on which ‘where’ and ‘when’ they released the air are written. The air collected at Mt. Hiei satisfies the equation of ‘+, − = 0’ by returning again after being released at museums. DUCK in DUCK is in the same continuum. In this performance piece, which occurred at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, the artist correlates his last name of ‘Kwak’ with ‘quak,’ the sound of a duck. As he and a duck shout out ‘kwak’ and ‘quak’ together, he, a human being, is lowered (minus) to the status of a duck and the duck ascends (plus) to that of a human being, while drawing the ‘0.’ This quest of ‘being’ through the use of the concept of ‘relationship’ can also be seen in Event 8230, and this video work is created under the nonsensical setting of photographing and being photographed. Here the video equipment is not a tool to record an event, but it is objectified as something like a mirror in which he sees himself. The artist who is photographing and the dark shadow that is photographing him never meet each other, but their ceaseless attempt to focus on each other irritates both themselves and the viewers. The initial ludicrousness gradually changes into an obsession as the image tenaciously repeats itself. This results only in a pathetic effort toward self-examination, which he never achieves. The acts he performs in these events personify the meaningless. And in the sense that the meaningless is embodied through nonsense and the artist absorbed in the act is treated objectively, this work is based on the same conception of the Weight-scale series. 3. The Meaning of the Meaningless The meaninglessness of measurement led to the meaninglessness of ‘information’ in the Repetition series. While emphasizing the property of repetition in printmaking by making silkscreen prints of a page of an English paper again and again, he juxtaposed identical images or endlessly repeated the printing of an image on the same sheet of paper, which resulted in a jet-black surface. Later, he inverted this by using the negative or made the images overlap one another by means of an acrylic plate or a mirror, while transforming the ‘information’ of a newspaper into a ‘painting.’ This stems from his exploration of the relationship between the real and the representation and between reality and the reflected. By inverting a photographic image of an English newspaper or removing a certain part from the picture plane, the artist revealed the meaninglessness through the falsehood of information, for he thought that the characteristic of the mass media to fossilize reality is suitable for the disclosure of falsehood hidden behind reality. Paradoxically, he believed, “to say the images of a newspaper do not lie clearly evince the numerous lies the images tell.” His way of exposing the meaninglessness of information by eradicating a part of a photographic image in his work is also well exemplified in his Elimination and Representation series. The three images consisting of identical photographs are eliminated of its parts here and there. The outlines of the unrecognizable images are treated with almost the same intensity so that the movement of the gaze by viewers organically links the picture planes. It is only parts that are subjected to removal, and the removal does not threaten the overall composition of the three images. Again, the relationship between ‘elimination’ and ‘representation’ is also meaningless. The same principle is employed for Elimination, Existence, which consists of twenty photographs and for Cognition that speaks of the distance between a real object and its dictionary definition. A more aggressive statement of the meaninglessness of the information carried by a newspaper or other mass media can be found in the Documentation series. In TIME December 14, 1981, Kwak tore up photographic images from the pages of Time magazine and glued them on the picture surface, and then covered the rest of the picture plane with white powder, on which he left bits of primitive patterns of animals and dolls taken from the wall paintings of the Bush tribe. These bits of the patterns overcast the rest of the picture plane. Published weekly, Time magazine summarizes the world for one week, and photographic images that it shows as corroborative facts are effaced with incoherent images and instead parts from a cave painting, one of the first paintings in history, are engraved. And this persistent ‘repetition and effacement’ is his strategic way for the revelation of the meaninglessness of the world and the falsehood of information. One would habitually try to read the text of Time magazine in the work, and it is as meaningless as it can be to attempt to read a newsmagazine whose concrete information is castrated. The images of tens of thousands years intrude into one of the latest copies of an internationally renowned newsmagazine, and the artist here attempts through these primeval images to preserve the power and original integrity of painting. Such coexistence of the contemporary and the primeval reappears in the Society and Mural Painting series. On the right men with a bow are hunting deer and the rest of the picture plane is filled with countless tiny squares in which unrecognizable symbols or codes. The artist explains that this Society-Mural Painting is ‘a wall painting of our time.’ In his Meaninglessness series, a rather more direct approach is used in his continuous attempt to discover the meaning of contemporary life through the meaningless. Instead of animals and codes, human figures appear, and the picture plane is divided into dozens of small squares, which are packed with human figures and codes with no meaning. The information carried by a magazine or other mass media is obliterated by white powder, and a comical figure of a man with a briefcase in his overcoat whose collar is pulled up appears in the picture plane crammed with cartoon cuts. The continuously repeated images within small squares give one false hope that it is interpretable. But such an attempt fails by the murmuring of the man leering his eye. Saying “It is meaningless, it is meaningless,” the gloomy eyes of the man hint that there is no interpretative and formal connection between the images. In this man looking askance, with his hat over his eyes, one observes both the artist and himself or herself: trying to pass by the day as a cynical, unconcerned spectator, but being unable to look away, and just wandering around muttering meaningless words. Ironically, this forlorn wanderer manifesting the meaninglessness of the world and the falsehood of information guides us on a journey to the ‘true meaning’ of the relationship between you and me. And this is what his ‘meaninglessness’ truly means. His unique origin of birth forced him to constantly verify his own being and identity in both countries. During his entire lifetime, he has posed questions about the individual’s ‘identity’ and ‘being,’ on which he played variations through diverse themes such as ‘the relationship between a society and the individual,’ ‘the difference between information and cognition’ and ‘the distance between media images and personal thought.’ His oeuvre shows his untiring artistic transformations, not being restricted to one art form but encompassing painting, printmaking, object art, photography, performance, etc. He facilitates the viewers’ understanding of his work by caricaturing existential and intricate subject matters from the ‘perspective of a bystander’ while making a paradoxical return to universal meanings. And this is why Kwak’s art occupies a unique place in the artistic scenes of both Korea and Japan. In the contemporary environment where the difference of the other is accepted and the structure of global networks accommodates multinationality, his obsessive ‘search for identity,’ which originates from his origin of birth, has produced an ironical situation for him in that he embraces both societies as his world and in turn both countries positively recognize his achievements. Artist of the Year 2003, which shows the art of Kwak Duckjun who is artistically active both in Korea and overseas, provides a great opportunity to examine contemporary Korean art and its promise in the international art scene and to look closely into the art of Kwak. Through the art of Kwak who has established his own artistic world with his high spirits and artistic obstinacy in the shadowy path of Korean modern history, in addition, I believe it would offer a valuable chance to observe a chapter of contemporary Korean art history that Korean artists abroad have written. *Source: Kang Soo-jung, “The Life and Art of Kwak Duckjun,” in Artist of the Year 2003: Kwak Duckjun, exhibition catalogue (Gwacheon: National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003), 16–25. This text has been edited for minor typographical corrections.