First, Daseul Song primarily
presents video works that focus on today’s media environment. She regards
images or moving images as outcomes in which time has been materialized, and
exhibits works that encourage viewers to imagine the materiality of time. For
the artist, landscapes on the screen are not transparent windows that represent
the world like paintings on canvas, but sites that generate collisions among
multiple senses.
For this reason, her works feature times and images that have
been cut, pasted, and edited. As seen in Distorted Night,
for example, the video emits rupturing sounds reminiscent of a camera shutter,
rendering discontinuous forms. These attempts aim to experiment with the
mediated sensations experienced by contemporary image consumers and producers.
By contrast, Soyoung Bae explores
modes of image interpretation and the gaps between images and signs through
various media such as video, performance, and installation. This process is
somewhat immediate and instinctual. Accordingly, she focuses on conveying
sensations as “atmospheres” or “situational staging.” In works such as The
Devil Laughs and Glow-in-the-dark Ghosts,
viewers feel an inexplicable sense of crisis while simultaneously experiencing
a kind of temptation. In this way, the artist embraces with her own body the
subtle sweetness that accompanies anxiety and fear, revealing synesthetic
emotions articulated by images in diverse forms.
The collaborative works created
by the two artists include Cave, Stone, Sleep-talking People, Useless
Gifts and Pious Hearts, and a Cat Soaked in Milk, Golden
Eyes, and Lullaby of the Nymphs. Among
them, Golden Eyes and Lullaby of the
Nymphs are lenticular works in which images change depending on
the viewer’s angle.
As viewers move their bodies back and forth in front of the
works, they experience fragmented images within a single frame coming into
harmony and being re-edited through their own act of looking. In this way,
visitors participate in the collision of lava and glaciers, and in the journey
of obsidian.
Daseul Song and Soyoung Bae are
members of the project team “Moon Tan Shop” (Daseul Song, Soyoung Bae, Eunsol
Lee), formed at the end of 2020. This team previously presented the work Echo’s
Valley at 《Typojanchi
2021: A Turtle and a Crane》 held last September. As
Daseul Song noted in the exhibition foreword, the black stone generated through
these various collaborations may someday bring its arduous journey to an end
when it feels completely exhausted.
Although the journey has only just begun,
one looks forward to seeing what kind of trajectory the artists will have
forged by the time they reach its end. Please note that this exhibition
operates on a reservation-only basis due to COVID-19 restrictions, and advance
booking is recommended.
