Ye-eun Min, Cannot Be Conveyed in Words, 2021, Plywood, timber, paint, curtains, clay, hinges, lighting, Dimensions variable (360x360x240cm) © Ye-eun Min

As the fifteenth presentation project in the visual arts category, Incheon Art Platform presents resident artist Ye-eun Min’s 《Cannot Be Conveyed in Words》.

Ye-eun Min is interested in visualizing ambiguous spaces and nonlinear time that arise through the interaction between inside and outside, matter and thought. She has continued to create works that generate diverse times and spaces by collecting objects used by multiple people and arranging them within pre-prepared frames, or through materials that undergo change, the properties and stories held by matter, and audience participation.

The artist focuses on erasing vertical timelines and blurring horizontal boundaries in the process through which different times and spaces connect and become entangled in order to become one. The time and space created by the artist are virtual and nonexistent, while also being real. Using various media and materials, she constructs temporary states of harmony and provisional states of balance that are unfamiliar yet governed by their own rules.

Each entity forms mutual relationships, affects and is affected by others, and creates equal relations through numerous centers rather than through hierarchy. Recently, the artist has been unfolding through her work the organic relationship between figuration and abstraction, the boundary between what is visible and invisible, and stories about things we think we have seen but have not.

Ye-eun Min, Cannot Be Conveyed in Words, 2021, Plywood, timber, paint, curtains, clay, hinges, lighting, Dimensions variable (360x360x240cm) © Ye-eun Min

In this exhibition, 《Cannot Be Conveyed in Words》, the artist presents unreal images created with concrete materials. Lighting that casts light, windows with curtains, and shadows on clay laid across the floor are all scenes we may have seen somewhere before and elements that are easy to recognize, yet somehow they are difficult to connect into a single thing.

Using elements that can be easily captured, the artist creates abstract images and reveals the space between imagination and reality. When viewers enter the large structure occupying the exhibition space, they encounter light shining from four windows installed within the space. This light blurs what we know or makes us imagine a moment when time has stopped.

Yet time in the world continues to move forward. Through this work, the artist sought to present an unfamiliar landscape that seems recognizable but cannot be logical, to those who belong to a world where the passage and direction of time are perceived through changes produced by a single light.

We hope viewers will encounter the shadows spreading in all directions inside the exhibition space, then step outside again and look at the exterior illuminated by artificial light. Through the raw walls built from plywood and lumber, the work may lead to a concrete experience that moves between imagination and reality.

Artist’s Note
“A single space where four different times and spaces meet” is something we have never experienced, so it cannot be explained in words and is difficult even to imagine. Each person imagines it according to their own experience and knowledge, and therefore everyone’s imagination is bound to be different. I do not know whether scientific grounds or logical explanation are possible, or even necessary, but perhaps we are in fact already in such a situation.

References