Poster image of 《Signs of Bugahyeon-dong》 © Hapjungjigu

The network of connections that once seemed capable of extending endlessly in every direction has been helplessly ‘locked down.’ As parts of the vast structures surrounding us became paralyzed, humanity retreated into individual spaces, taking refuge in the unit of the ‘individual.’ This contemporary crisis—or perhaps a warning—has generated anxiety and concern, yet at the same time has begun to suggest the contours of another possible future. If the world up to now was a dominant current shaped by grand narratives and an orientation toward globalization, the present moment may mark the point at which that great wave breaks, revealing worlds that had been pushed outside the mainstream.

At this juncture, when major shifts are being foretold, the exhibition 《Signs of Bugahyeon-dong》 functions as one sign illuminating that outer terrain. The title of the exhibition derives from ‘Bukahyeon-dong,’ the location of Chugye University for the Arts, which serves as a point of connection among the participating artists. By foregrounding academic ties and locality, the exhibition attempts a modest intervention into a present moment in which the belief that the ‘world has been unified’ is gradually collapsing.


Choi Gene Uk, Monster, Language, Sign of Disaster Community, 2019 © Choi Gene Uk

The exhibition is composed of two parts. Part I, on view from May 8 to May 30, features works by Yumi Park, Hyerim Jun, Jeongju Choi, and Choi Gene Uk. Yumi Park’s works are created in forms that can only be discovered by carefully peering into small holes, metaphorically capturing moments in which individuals come into contact with the world and register tactile awareness. Jeon Hyerim interweaves the materials, meanings, methodologies, and surfaces that constitute her practice, presenting situations in which meaning and image become interconnected.

Choi Jeongju presents dozens of works from the process of Drawing Study, produced under a set of limitations imposed in pursuit of a ‘perfect’ image. Choi Gene Uk’s Monster, Language, Sign of Disaster Community unfolds as three parallel scenes: the painter’s self-portrait, the shadow of a gargantuan human-like mouthwash bottle, and a scene beneath Dongjak Bridge where fishing nets are being mended at a fish spawning ground.
 
Part II, running from June 4 to June 26, presents works by NAOMI, Min Sunghong, and Eunah Hong. NAOMI intervenes imaginatively in the narratives and images of specific places, constructing new stories with a horizontal sense of temporality. Min Sunghong presents installation works that assemble a massive carousel made from discarded objects and a constellation of ceramic bird feet, produced through ‘making’ as a process of confronting a world without answers and searching for one’s own mode of survival. Eunah Hong presents White 0., a work in which images of Changdeokgung Palace, North Korean beaches, and rural landscapes in North Korea are layered together. These three overlapping images are transformed into an abstract ‘void’ in which concrete contexts dissolve, transcending the boundaries of reality.
 
While the exhibition proposes the clear starting point of ‘locality’—the ground upon which individuals stand—it does not posit a macro-level destination toward which it must arrive, such as political discourse or historical imperatives. Instead, it operates as a sign of the present by aspiring to an independent world in which differing attitudes and experiments in art, along with the questions and answers they generate, extend outward in multiple directions before converging, colliding, and entangling with one another in a single space.

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