Installation view of 《Gametophyte》 (Cheongju Art Studio, 2023) ©Hkason

Cheongju Art Studio in 2023 presents a relay project showcasing the creative outcomes produced during the residency period of its 17th cohort of artists. The Resident Artist Relay Project introduces to the public each artist’s rigorously rethought direction emerging from their time in the studio. A total of fourteen artists were selected for the 17th cohort, and the project continues through December 2023.

When the body’s fluid movements are replaced by the mechanical movements of form, and naturalness is transformed into artifice in an instant, in what ways can such artificial movement demonstrate dramatic and performative capacities?

Hkason previously presented the cyclical, intersecting process of two entities in the 2016 performance perfect match(2016). In 2022, The in Between Gesture(2022) developed a performance grounded in posture correction and an organism’s molting—evoking the spirit that challenges the physical resistance of sport, that is, a body and mind that test their own limits. Whereas earlier works devised wearable sculptures that respond to human motion so that bodily movement is fully transferred into another form, the present exhibition experiments with a kinetic performance in which the sculptural forms themselves interact and resonate with humans.

Installation view of 《Gametophyte》 (Cheongju Art Studio, 2023) ©Hkason

In 《Gametophyte》, the projection of mirrors and the blocking of doorways conceal and reveal the continuity and ephemerality of a ceaselessly flowing space, while waves of water, the grain of light, and the dissipation of fog stage moments of climax, tension, and appearance as performance. The facing installations that catalyze performance disclose a dual nature of contestation and coupling as they calibrate force and balance.

This duality begins with the monumental skeletal frames of the stands that also give the installations the character of both performer and stage. Offsetting the stands’ inherent convenience and functionality, mismatched joints between disparate materials are made to interlock, producing unexpected combinations.

From the acts of wearing, draping, entering, and slotting—central to earlier works—Hkason extends toward implementations in which qualities and forms appear transformed, overturning an existing sculptural language and seeking new modes of transposition.

Installation view of 《Gametophyte》 (Cheongju Art Studio, 2023) ©Hkason

“Gametophyte” names the stage in which separate male and female gametes exist and, through fertilization, move to the next cycle. Like the gametophyte that divides for alternation of generations and proceeds toward recombination, the sculptural installations, set up as if in opposition, and the viewers who come to see them are, in fact, conjoined.

The relationship between human motility and the movements of the sculptural forms evokes the gametophyte process by which plants generate male and female gametes for reproduction. Facing the doorway and passing over into the wave of water, human motility resembles lovers—or adversaries—who respond to each other’s senses and presence.

Just as the ever-present “I” is constituted before the ceaselessly absent “you,” the viewer and the sculptural object complete one another through mutual existence. As love does not resolve into a single word but is fulfilled within relation, ATOPOS—existing through absence and completing itself through lack—is realized in the real world, namely, the exhibition space.

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