1.

The exhibition title, Miniascape Theory, also serves as a tool for viewing the world and encapsulates the entirety of the show. In this exhibition, the artist navigates through the concept of 'miniascape (縮景, miniascape).'1) The works, implemented as "methods of excavation, verticality, and the privilege of the miniature" (artist's note), are paired or discordant across two distinct physical spaces (Art Space HYEONG and Shift) and are exposed to the viewer's perspective. These miniature-sized pieces appear as stones, mountains, or fragmented landscapes of a fallen nation, either autonomously or through the artist's intervention. His current work nonchalantly enjoys the misinterpretations of theory and technique.

According to the artist, "The term 'miniascape,' used in fields such as suiseki (壽石), bonsai (盆栽), and artificial rockeries (石假山), refers to the art of miniaturizing natural landscapes." Rather than focusing on the actual mountains or rocks, the artist observes the customs of accumulation, scaling, exhibition, and preservation. He seems to recall the techniques and constructions of noise music and circuit combinations, which have long been of interest to him. With an independent definition and customs of 'miniascape' that still exist, Hyun Nahm evokes stones and mountains that are impossible to misread or misinterpret.

Perhaps due to the term 'art,' I had been referring to his title as 'Miniascape Art' instead of 'Miniascape Theory' until just before completing this text. From opera glasses held by theatergoers in the mid-19th century to smartphone screens today, these are devices meant to better present moving or static subjects, appearing more as techniques than theories to me. They felt like convenient strategies that, once obsolete, should be discarded. However, Hyun Nahm's Miniascape Theory refers to the exhibition hall as a 'theory,' where individual sculptures are placed on pedestals, forming a collective configuration.


 
2.

Let's attempt to attach a method of temporary impossibility to the endlessly repeating and unsettled 'updates.' He experiences the unknown processes of the 'whole,' which cannot be fully grasped through techniques like chemical making, noise or errors caused by electrical circuits. This becomes a sensation when viewing a crude scholar's stone on a clumsy dish or an ancient weathered stone that has discarded time, leaving only its body. Or it might explode. Perhaps it's a pedestal upon a pedestal; through the artist's 'negative process of making,' it appears before us not as a 'small fragment' but as a 'small whole.' Observing a reality filled with the accumulation of peripheral by-products without an original, the artist seeks to continue and mediate his repetitive actions by establishing a 'theory' that reverses specific subjects A and B. In this exhibition, more important than the manifesto of 'materializing landscapes' are the artist's questions and hypotheses. They are presented as follows: "Why can a small stone resemble a landscape like mountains and water, even without a consciously intended subject of reproduction? This is because the principles that determine the form of specific natural objects—the parts—are the same as those that create the form of the landscape—the whole."

Therefore, Hyun Nahm's exhibition Miniascape Theory encompasses both the tool and the entirety of the exhibition, as well as the experiences prior to sculpture-making contained in the folders 'stone exploration' and 'landscape recording.' His 'Miniascape Theory,' which 'excavated' the grand themes of stones and mountains into 'exploration' and 'landscape,' remains in numerous photographic images of grotesque stones in the Confucian Temple in Shanghai, massive black and rugged stones glistening under rare light in Hangzhou's Lingyin Temple, and many images of scholar's stones sitting in Kyoto's bonsai markets. The Miniascape Theory exhibition is also Hyun Nahm's naming of projecting/throwing 'reproduction' into chemical reactions under the pretext of digesting the continuation of crude beliefs in tombs, mountains, and stones.

Then, what kind of tool is it? It is a 'technology of occurrence' that brings the mountains and stones he physically experienced to the forefront. Separate from the concept of 'Miniascape Theory' defined by the artist, the pedestals and works in the exhibition hall have the effect of large things reincarnated as small ones. Nature as the original and sculptures reproduced in a reversed (negative) form are presented.2)

Secondly, what does it mean to encompass both the front and back of the exhibition? The works placed in the exhibition hall refer to the artist's making process itself and also produce objects from the suburban mountains he observed. Miniascape (Single Peak) (2020) and Miniascape (Double Peak) (2020) in the exhibition hall are works that were originally one but split into two, and Purifier (2020) presents its close source through photographs. Could the purifier, not a scholar's stone from afar, be a modern animism or totem? If Rotating Ellipsoid (2020) shows the verticality of a node cutting through the content of the landscape, the pink color reinforces the dullness of an artificial object/copy that is hard to look at for long. Reverse City (2019), Construction Site (2020), and Negative Landmark (2020) might present a miniature whole of some urban landscape landmark, but I find it more interesting to observe the process where even the pedestal becomes a mass.
 


3.

In front of me now is a 'production process' JPEG sent by the artist Hyun Nahm. Let's call this paper, which is neither a drawing nor a memo, a 'work production diagram' or perhaps a circuit of the production process. The process of how certain materials are implemented into final results unfolds through images and text. From crushing a block of pink insulation foam (1) to dissolving parts of it with acetone, leaving only the hardened spaces inside (4), the process oscillates between active and passive voices. If the artist's intention is to combine the pink material into one mass, the 'phenomenon' of ice and heat adjusting their strengths and melting, guided by clocks and arrows (->) drawn on the paper, must be left alone to occur. If epoxy, cement, and insulation foam are the first material substances, what's important to Hyun Nahm is the spontaneous occurrence and distortion of forms (of epoxy). Without applying artificial force, the inevitable occurrences from the secondary and tertiary combinations of A and B, or C/D, surpass the original intentions. Let's read the sentences revealed in his production diagram. Cracks, discoloration, and numerous bubbles occur during the hardening process, and deformation due to expansion and contraction happens. Placing something on a pedestal and indiscriminately observing what was discovered while descending a mountain is a freedom that fights against public and private customs. The clarity of individuals and groups remembering, stones and mountains, and material presence contrasts with something else.

"Here, the noise of the record becomes a constant for measuring the clarity of variable memories, forming a material presence that contrasts with the fading memory."3)
 


1) All quotations referenced herein are from Hyun Nahm’s artist notes. After being invited to write the exhibition preface, the author requested documentation of the artist's production process along with the notes, which the artist shared around March 2020. The provided notes were written between 2018 and 2020.
2) Effect and emergence coexist. It's as if the temporal order has been inverted. Although Hyun Nahm discusses this inversion in his artist notes, he also explained it during our conversation: “What was concave ends up as convex. Some things arise in the process of melting. Amidst the mess, something takes shape. Like generating sound by short-circuiting an electric circuit, I enjoy the physical and chemical reactions created by twisting and transforming materials or techniques.” (This conversation took place around May 2020 in the artist’s studio in Euljiro.)
3) In 2017, I invited Hyun Nahm to write a free-form essay on “references.” He responded with a lengthy text on the subject of the “caretaker,” which he had selected as his own research topic. The writing remains unpublished.

References

• 작가 홈페이지 (Artist Website)