X0

The exhibition title ‘Xagenexx’ is a meaningless sign rejects to be verbalised. This declarative attitude trying not to be interpreted as a certain language, however, disproves the fact here are things need to be read considerably. The action of reading again and again but preparing fallacies might fulfill the intention of resistance against to be understood. In fact, it is not impossible to detect which of the meaningless term ‘Xagenexx’ was derived from a meaningful term. The important thing, however, is not just the identity of alphabet originally existed at the position of x.

Although the artist herself is reluctant to reveal the starting point, in fact the dimension we have to claim our better attention is the multiple statuses of ‘x’ which hypocritically occupies pre-existed alphabet. It disguises alphabet x by occupying both sides of the word ‘agene’; it is a mysterious value x which indicates another alphabet should have written instead; more than that, it has to be a performative x with the action of wiping out the alphabet; to add on, it is even a movement of life that is expanding to both sides of ‘a gene’. This text, therefore, tries to set the decisive factor ‘x’ which de-verbalises the title ‘Xagenexx’ as a variable value and estimates possible (false) values able to be substituted.
 


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The visitors face with the numerous appearance of x when they enter the exhibition space. The figuration of x is dense and full on the surface of paintings and the windows spread out in two spots of the exhibition space. The fact, that the presence of x which schemes to un-signify the title is actually a visual structure composing the exhibition requisitely, arouses mutual interrogation between the image of painting and language texts. The function of language omitted from the title returns to the image of painting, and it provokes and consecutively blocks the behavior of reading things narratively. (Thus the thing causes from the replacement of pre-existed alphabet to x in the title, is not the disappearance of meaning but the amplification of inquiries.)

In the perspective of the space, meanwhile, the scene that a series of x made up of various colours and lines coming out from the canvas and connected to the windows and wall is quite appealing. How the unit of painting is divided? How the modules of exhibition as the object of appreciation arithmetically relates to the physical sum of each painting? How the world in general and a specific painting are possible to connote or infer to each other? Curiously, a building under the construction is seen over the window during the exhibition period; tapes are attached in the shape of diagonal x on the window of the building to show the presence of glass, as usual. x represents the interior of painting’s frame is a blocked surface which does not penetrate the world, but at the same time it is a index alerts the presence of the world beyond the frame.

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So to speak, x is a function of two-dimensional painting about the three-dimensional world, and is the process that the world converges into one surface. x which condenses to a single point devours the light and absorbs the world. The most famous hypothesis of x as a spot would be the linear perspective. Since painting gradually decided to give up this device, at the point of time when the perspective became a term cannot be told frankly, a group of x Park scattered in the exhibition 《Xagenexx》 seems to expose the framework of the perspective.

Like the original meaning as ‘see through (arsperspectiva/perspicere)’, the perspective requires to presume the midrise spaces and discern them. When the perspective that invented the impression of depth by accomplishing the space is visualised not as the principle in the process of painting but as the icon stick fast on the surface of the painting, the question surrounding the perspective twists its standpoint. How the flow of time that painting cannot represent and multiple perspectives changing from moment to moment can penetrate painting? It becomes the matter of light when it comes to 《Xagenexx》.

 
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Park Junghae might obstinately reject the attempt to associate a specific subject with the diamond-shape in the exhibited work 〈Twins chord〉, but the viewer like myself who started to imagine the connection between the perspective and the flow of x might think of the aperture of camera. The device which controls the amount of light penetrates the lens keep carving and erasing the shape of x with opened and closed movement. The amount of light the aperture allows directly relates to the matter of depth that an image creates; so to speak, it has been taking a decisive role with regards to photography that took the ideology of the perspective from painting.

The world is condensed for an instant when the aperture operates to separate a moment from the series of flow of moments. Cutting out a single part from a flow might always connote concealment more than the truth, and 《Xagenexx》 erases the attempt of deception by drawing x on the things that the surface of painting cannot embody. Rather than replicating photography, it represents the impossibility of replication, and steps back as a symbol of various possibilities. These symbols are surrounded by light, and this light is not imposed nor released from the painting but comes from the exterior, for instance from beyond the window which is exceptional when it comes to the exhibition space, and it runs through the wall, cut across the air, and stays on the canvas. Yes it is, 《Xagenexx》 is the exhibition of light. The light rises and disappears depending on the current of time. (Speak half in jest, let it call x-ray that makes in-deepness to remain on the surface.)

 
X4

It might be the finished matter to someone. It is said light and time. The matter of light and representation of world that has long been discussed by painting was entrusted to video with the advent of photography and film, and it is also rapidly draining away. The attempt of painting to connote the flow of time in painting also has achieved the agreement of its own outcome and failure through plenty of modifications. In fact, when the painting repeated the recursive question that only considers itself since it has released itself from the duty of representation of visual world, the two clauses – light and time – seemed to be banished from the painting forever.

Park Junghae’s 《Xagenexx》 follows the track of light but not thoughtlessly insists it can be embodied, and it ironically reminds of a claim about film. According to Manoel De Oliveira, film is “a saturation of magnificent signs bathing in the light of their absence of explanation”. Rather than overwhelmed by the unexplainable situation, 《Xagenexx》 holds the willingness of description provisionally and makes to stare the overflow of signs. Only different thing from Oliveira’s phrase is the location and direction of light. The light licking and staying on the surface of images and dilapidating, not releasing from the interior of image; a series of x as the traces of light. Park’s painting that aesthetically seeking for the sequence of light according to the elapsed of time, touches the thing which film might have tried to achieve, without appropriating video or trying to be similar to it.

References

• [비평] 빛 안에 잠겨있는 탁월한 기호들의 넘침
  [Critique] A saturation of magnificent signs bathing in the light