We’re all, as humans, living the same world; and therefore, time.
The life of in-residency artists of Seoul Art Space Geumcheon over the past year.
In January 2021, Seoul Art Space Geumcheon(SASG) started the new year to welcome the new resident artists. From winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to autumn and back to when the cold breeze greets us once more, the sixteen artists in the 12th residents have been spending their individually catered lives in SASG. With exclamation marks and question marks flying about, they’ve come to mark their periods on final projects, occasionally marking commas in between leading to the first of their next projects.
The project 《LIFE LOGGING》 that we plan on the Open Studio this time around is unlike any exhibition yet; it will premier a new, interesting look into their personal lives on a day-to-day basis, differing from other projects thanks to their stay in the residency.
《LIFE LOGGING》 is defined as “the act of recording ones’ daily life”, enabling others to peak into their personal lives, which will be accomplished through this exhibition. With the pandemic repeatedly interfering with life, many of us have been able to realize that the things we assumed obvious and took for granted may not be at all.
Regardless, we as humans have been able to adjust to the new, unforeseen situations that lay before us leaving records of our lives without even knowing it. Everyday, we find ourselves taking pictures with our phones, leaving memos as reminders, and adding songs recently listened to on our playlists. We leave remnants of fleeting moments of our lives, we leave records, occasionally sharing with others through social media and only when time has passed do we look into those records once more.
The projects that have started with the key phrase “Life Logging” has drawn their individual prologue and have left a unique mark of their daily lives, recording every moment. Heecheon Kim, Nosik Lim, and Yun Choi have focused theirs on the drive to work to Seoul Art Space Geumcheon. Allowing themselves to organize their thoughts on the way to work, they’ve been able to relate various songs or thoughts depending on the day. Having arrived at the studio, they have no time to think of anything else than to dive straight into work spending most of their time there.
Jiyoung Yoo and Sunpil Don have discovered the curiously changing of their personal studios that they’ve been observing continuously from January. Taeyeon Kim has been continuously organizing the changes of things around her as she’s been adjusting to her new studio and Woojung Hoh has been focused on the intricate spaces of Geumcheon, not giving anyone else a second thought. While Hyungjin Park and Min Shin have been surrounding themselves in drawings of their daily lives in the residency, Doyeon Gwon and Eun Chun have been breathing life back into the barren factory areas through photography in SASG.
Even with the limited interactions permitted between in-residency artists due to the pandemic, Youngmi Kim and Sujin Moon have been able to capture a memorable yet admittedly short-lived moment they shared together. On the other hand, Isaac Moon has been able to demonstrate the point in which daily life and the works of art contain no real boundaries. In addition, Kim Shinwook and Youngle Keem, who have published a book this past year, present a record of the process in different ways and forms.
Through this exhibition, I sincerely hope that many will be able to appreciate and discover many personal, and almost secretive, stories behind the projects of these many artists. Through the archived materials along with the time and space interlocking between the artists’ individual records I attempt to share the life that breathes within SASG.
Finally, I hope many of our audiences will be able to experience the artists’ lives closer than before who are living through the same time we are, finding today’s resting place; the comma. Additionally, I hope that our in-residency artists will be able to remember here and this time through the records.
