#28_Area Park by K.NOTe

K.NOTe no.28

Area Park

K.NOTe no.28

Area Park

Publisher Total Museum Press Pyungchang 32gil 10, Jongno-gu, Seoul Korea (03004) Tel. 82-2-379-7037 total.museum.press@gmail.com Director Jooneui Noh Editor in Chief Nathalie Boseul Shin, Yoon Jeong Koh Cordinator Hyosup Jung, Taeseong Yi Intern Minseo Park, Eunyoung Park Designer Hein Sohn Sponsor Arts Council Korea Date of Publication 2017. 4 ÂŠ Author and artist The reproduction of the contents of this magazine in whole or in part without written permission if prohibited.

K.NOTe #28 Area Park: Remnants within Photography, the Remaining History of the Future Hong Kyung-han Art Critic 1. A practical perspective intersects with an event’s perspective; reality and language coexist. Even as it takes on a representationality consistent with the traditional role of photography, it approaches it with neutral/neuter attitude of a critical order in a divided society, betraying a formalist aspect in the consistent theme of perspectives on human existence. In rejecting fictional harmony (the artist does not appear to be a great fan of the digital either), his work sometimes 1

The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster was the result of the mega-earthquake and tsunami that took place in March 2011. It resulted in a village becoming a dead city. The artist captured the bleakness of this village in his lens. His was the only life in a setting where all life had evaporated.

presents us with cold, dry traumas.1 But there is a warmth to the traces within, something that refuses to let go of hope in life. And these two things seem to form the backbone of Park’s work, maintaining a certain gap in between them. It is for this reason that the question “Is this nominal documentary photography?” gives me pause when I am faced with Area Park’s work. With their roots in long-sustained documentary journalism, Park’s photographs are difficult to accept as one-off depictions. Because they transcend mere factual records on the ground, their vivid “you are there” feeling and dynamic pulsation overlaid on the breath of unseen life in these cold objects, it is impossible to focus purely on the visual either. An “image letter” to Mari Kaneko, the focus of an album Park picked up by chance in a village outside Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture that had been all but leveled by the 2011 mega-earthquake and tsunami, recently offered a particular clue to show where Park’s feelings and philosophy are ultimately pointed. Interestingly, the various algorithms that give body to his photographic philosophy are always compatible, mutual, organic. Breathing quietly and patiently, they exist as a

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major counterweight to the expansion of photography’s aesthetic territory beyond objective record into subjective documentary. In allowing for a subjective, cultural anthropology approach in response to the zeitgeist, that counterweight naturally becomes an important value distinction through which the work gains recognition as the photography of an artist. More significant than this, however, is the sincere self-reflection in an attempt to transcend limitations and constructions, the experiments through which Park approaches fundamental issues of photography. It may be seen as a return to the aesthetic question “What is photography?,” a re-deconstruction of the long, long 2

In the author’s notes for his Way of

Photography: Picking Up an Album in Miyagi Prefecture series, Area Park writes, “Ironically, being on the scene of this disaster has led me not so much to take in the grim environment or experience that human anguish, but to contemplate and reconsider the meaning of photography in our lives.”

tunnel of time to return for the first time in a voluntary, nonartificial monologue on the inquiry into artist and the artist’s role. 2 And the history of Park’s photography through his arrival at this conclusion indicates simultaneously “remaining” as subject and vestiges as reality, a basis from which the remaining history of the future is foretold. 2. Indeed, Park’s works have been fairly static, yet without being passive. It has been an observer’s attitude, but a highly participatory one. Concretely, it has been one of actively uncovering the irrationalities of South Korean society, a “language of silence with passion” toward the systems that govern our lives. What has enabled to be expressed on the surface is the balanced effect of several

Interestingly, Part-Time (2001–2005) sees the artist listing the names of hourly workers and their daily wages in the titles. Also noteworthy is the introduction of the panoramic format, as though content is dictating form. It is a case where we can see Area Park’s ongoing commitment to experimentation, his attempts to broaden the scope of documentary photography.

processes: the subject’s gaze, a post-categorical quiet looking, and empathy. For example, the artist’s 2013 exhibition at the Ko Eun Museum of Photography in Busan was nothing short of an opportunity to look back on the history of his photography over the past 20 or so years. Representative of this are 386 Generation, which focuses on a generation that may be the establishment today but also shared its fortunes with history, experiencing moments of fortune and adversity within their struggle; Holding Out in Seoul, which depicts the day-to-day experience of modern-day people living arduous lives; and Part-Time 3 , which transposes

lives without an avenue for escape within the new class society of capitalism into the medium of color photography. Also representative of Park’s artistic vision are series like Saemaeul Movement, City Boys, The Game, Hidamari, and The Road of Photography. The content of these pieces may differ somewhat, but they are all infused with the artist’s values and world view toward the art museum as eternal escape within society (even if it can never actually function as such) and the structures that equate, standardize, and unify all things, while at the same time patently inheriting frameworks of exploitation. Moreover, while the scenes may be outwardly quiet, the hidden hyle that produces that tranquility is dynamic. A common presence in this is Park’s photographic philosophy, which holds that forms adopting hyle become realistic. (This may be the mold that shapes the artistic discourse on his work.) As with all art, the presence of an “artist” alone allows us to critically examine aspects of the world that are being or have been forgotten. There are also beneficial aspects provided or recalled by them that can be attained. From that perspective, the turning point for Area Park’s work came (as touched upon previously) with the mega-earthquake that took place in eastern Japan in March 2011. Strictly speaking, this was a disaster, a catastrophe built by scientific, reasonable, rational aspects that humans had trusted in without question, a tragic relic of history. In a sense, it delineated the limits of humanity in the face of disaster, just as William Turner’s The Shipwreck (1805) had done. In any case, the earthquake in eastern Japan is what set the artist’s body and mind in motion. His examination of the collapse in so many values, the resulting shock and chaos, and the frailty of human existence spurred him into dynamism. It is difficult to deny, however, the clear presence within that of the artist’s aims as a photographer and the practice of his sense of obligation – the idea that one cannot exist as a pure artist without showing some concern for social conscience. 7

3. Area Park leaves the center of the incident behind to roam the scene. In his work, he interrogates the social role of art, perceiving the potential physical dangerous and undergoing a repeated process of pursuit of and by security officials. The resulting condensations, so to speak, are the works found in Road of Photography (2011–) and An Itinerant’s Record (1989–2013). Let us consider a few of these pieces as examples. Since Park wrote an “image letter to “Mari Kaneko” (someone else’s memory, perhaps their daughter), his photographs have transposed personal objects positioned alone in places devoid of human presence: a rippling sea conveying unease and menace; an empty street at 2 in the afternoon with no signs of life and countless closed circuit cameras; a creaking hobby horse without an owner and a crystal-clear album in a dreary setting; a glove that might have been held in someone’s hand; an image of Michael Jackson across a tree. Inscribed in the frame are objects found in Fukushima and Miyagi Prefecture, along with old items from a Tokyo flea market and second-hand store. By intervening and 4

May 19–October 11, 2015, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon.

storing the moments, the artist shows different aspects of a disaster that is by no means confined to the past. These things (however peaceful they may appear) are haunted by a painful aching sense. While the earthquake, the tsunami, the collapse nuclear power

“A middle-aged man sits vacantly on the site of a home swept away by the tsunami, slowly exhaling cigarette smoke,” Park writes in the Artist’s Notes for Way of Photography. “His tears having dried away, his eyes have lost their focus. His words – he talks about wishing he had a photograph of his missing wife – pierce my ears and make my cheeks quiver. So many bodies to be buried without so much as a funeral photograph, and so no face. What does photography represent in our lives?”

plants, and all the things that evaporate may have brought about a brutal outcome, they also indicate an ordeal that may have been perceptible. More profoundly, they represent a form of existential reflection on what remains after withstanding, what is left behind and what is chosen, what has been lost and what exists now in traces. As reaffirmed in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Exhibition City We Have Known: The Photography of Kang Hong-goo and Area Park 4 , this is a metaphor for projected memory, an aesthetic exploration into the source of the hyle that produces wounds, and a study of the essence of photography.5

At this point, we might summarize things by saying that what allows Area Park’s art to exist as art is the way it hungers constantly for the new and encounters its historical context. It continues to speak out, focusing all the while on the seedy conditions of labor, on a contemptible political history, on the ways in which nature has fought back against a civilization disguised as “evolution,” and on lives of deprivation. Settled here are artistic elements – not simply the seen or “signs of the times,” but all the things a documentary photography should possess: the artist’s subjective interpretations, the discovery of truth, the existential system that is the sharing of emotions. The form in particular – unstaged (apart from works like Saemaeul Movement), pre-visualized, with artistically configured spaces – serves a frame to more strongly emphasize this existential spirit. Beneath that we find a few characteristics: the artist’s attempts to answer philosophical and fundamental questions such as “What is photography?” or “What does it mean to record something?,” his physical movements back and forth over boundaries, an unconstrained openness of expression. All of these things are key components that give his wife a quality of discrimination. If we think about it, Area Park’s documentary qualities are tied to his personal history and the history of society. He presents a new perspective that examines reality on the ground – places that may seem unconnected to us, yet are ultimately deeply tied. At this, this is meditative, resonating like a message from a lookout tower. Yet Park is unstinting about his presence within a single historical context or physical space. His photographic art consistently and actively strides up to changing catalysts – speaking, producing, without ever turning its back of a history that is sprinting toward catastrophe. Through the forms that assign order to his language, Park’s photographs leave behind a remaining history to be

To the universal question “What is photography?,” the artist’s decision is clear. “Photography,” he says, “gifts memories to the viewer, be it their own or those of others, and functions a compass to gauge their own existence right now. Even a photograph of something that has nothing at all to do with us can expand its meaning when it is connected to our lives.” (On a side note, this author find Park’s stripped-down texts wrap more tightly around his heart the more he reads them.)

inscribed on the future.

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Area Park Area Park studied documentary photography as an undergraduate and graduate student at Chung-Ang University. He has drawn attention from the art world from his efforts and exploration toward a new documentary photography in form and content terms. He also poses questions about whether the origins and meaning of photography still hold in the digital era and explores possible alternatives. He currently travels back and forth between South Korea and Japan working on several projects. Park has held numerous solo exhibitions, including Way Of Photography: Picking Up an Album in Miyagi Prefecture (Atelier Hermès, Seoul, 2012), An Itinerant’s Record (Ko Eun Museum of Photography, Busan, 2013), and The Game (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2006). He has taken apart in many group exhibitions, including City We Have Known: The Photography of Kang Hong-goo and Area Park (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2015), the Gwangju Biennale’s Annual Report, Trans Pop (Arko Art Center, Seoul, 2007), the Daegu Photography Biennale, 60 Years of Modern Korean Photography (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2008), Landscape of Korean Contemporary Photography (Seoul Museum of Art, 2007), Tagging Art Works (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2013), and Symptom of Adolescence (Rodin Gallery, Seoul, 2006), as well as around 100 special exhibitions in South Korean and overseas at venues such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Rheinbahnhaus Photography Museum in Germany. His work is included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; the Seoul Museum of Art; the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art; the Ko Eun Museum of Photography; UBS Collection; Art Link; Seoul Olympic Museum of Art; and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

Hong Kyung-han Hong Kyung-han is an art critic and. He previously served as chief editor of Misul Segye (Art World) and the monthly Public Art, the visual arts journal Article and as an advisory committee member for the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, judging panel member for the Doosan Group’s Doosan Yonkang Art Awards, exhibition judging committee for the Seoul Museum of Art, and museum upgrade review committee for the city of Seoul. He contributed pieces for numerous media, including the Weekly Kyunghyang, and serves as an outside director for the Daelim Cultural Foundation and executive committee member for the Busan Biennale. He also appears regularly on the KBS Radio program Munhwa Hanmadang and the KBS2TV program Achim. He is currently a director of Gangwon Internationl Biennale.

Area Park