The image I make is made in an instant. This is same as the time shorter than 0.1 second during which the shutter of the camera makes the sound of flipping one time. As a matter or a scene comes to my eyes via light, the light coming through the lens of a camera is fixed on the film (or CCD) and made to a still image. The image enables me to see again what I want to remember such as not only my family, home and surroundings but also unfamiliar scenes of the places I travelled and the person I loved. The images obtained like this often make me lost in reflection and I love such a moment. I feel like I am back to that moment. When I watch pictures of my grandmother, they make me think of the country house of my grandmother and the brook in front of it where I enjoyed swimming and fishing when I was a child and make me experience the coziness I felt while I was sleeping resting my head on the lap of grandmother. Though it was a great while ago, the feeling remains still vivid.
Living means the time from one is born until the moment he dies after spending time, which we call a human life. Also, time encompasses present, past and future and being alive means this moment, the moment which is changing from the past to the future. Though we can not return back to the past time, we have an ability to remember and retrospect the past, and can even imagine something which did not take place.
In order to leave what they want to remember, humans have drawn pictures and made sculptures on the walls of caves from ancient time and left records using letters they created. When we see history, we come to know that the means of leaving has changed according to the times though the behavior to express something was the same. Before invention of letters, they drew or engraved the looks of their lives on cave walls or rocks or left forms made of clay or by carving stones or wooden pieces. After oil paint was developed, splendid colors could be expressed and recently we came to leave records more conveniently by acquiring images using a camera which can make light visible to our eyes into images.
Though artists thought that there were no need for pictures to exist any more when photographs appeared for the first time, they are still thriving and the reason is because there is a part which photographs can not easily express. Pictures and letters respectively have strong points and weak points in expressing something. In expressing feelings, letters and, in expressing forms, pictures are advantageous. For letters, a course of learning is required as it involves course of decoding and, in words expressing state of an object or feeling such as an adjective, exact communication is difficult as it intrinsically involves errors. We simply do not realize it for we are accustomed to it. Comparing with letters, approach to an image made of picture is easy beyond the limit of language but it is difficult to transfer something like feeling. Photographs are mainly used to record the surrounding state and current looks of oneself as photograph has realistic side and is faster in comparison to picture because photograph is obtained by putting incidental image into the machine.
Why I use photographs?
We are using letters (writing) as the main means to express our feeling and leave record. But, we use images to overcome the limitation of writing that only those who know the unique meaning agreed upon can interpret it and photograph is selected because of its strong points that it can record images fast and obtain images similar to those we see through eyes. But, a photograph has missing part in subjectively expressing the emotion of the artist in comparison to a picture. Namely, though the missing part is that it lacks time to spare for addition of the artist's intention like in a picture because the product has to be obtained by pressing on the shutter just one time, I am performing my work using photograph because such a weak point of photograph becomes advantage for the part I want to express accordingly making it the most adequate tool.
What I want to express?
Everyone going through a life has 'memory' obtained in the past time and experience and stored in the head. Memory is one of numerous abilities humans have but humans can not memorize all the past time or recollect all what have been memorized. Also memory is sometimes erased or distorted as time passes. Accordingly, we want to cherish good memories and leave them via recording. Those who have experienced a moment of suddenly recalling a forgotten memory by something may easily understand what I intend to express. I wish people may find something out of their own memories when they see my works.
Why I make the images blurred?
A clear image reduces interrelation. Human eyes are made more precise than they are thought to be. I am often surprised at the ability. When I walk on a bustling street among numerous people, my eyes and brain, without making special efforts, find a person I know among them. This means detecting small differences of the locations of eyes, nose and lips of the person from those of a typical human face and the person is detected momentarily based on information classified like that. Thus, I provide even the normal information in order to identify whether there is interrelation or not and blur the remaining minor parts in order to enhance interrelation. Though blurring increases interrelation, it should not be excessive. It is because, if too blurred, the cerebrum may not be able to judge the information received and complain of a headache or give up.
What is the reason why we have to recollect a memory by associating it with an image?
The volume of information is huge nowadays. There were newspapers 100 years ago but the space was limited and the amount of information was fixed. The only means to transfer images was a movie and real time relay was impossible. Of course, there was no means to transfer sound in real time 300 years ago. But we read philosophy books and anthologies of that time even now to be impressed and appreciate. It may be because the approach to the basic nature of humans does not change although environment of human lives changes. I mean philosophy such as rationality or recognition of life and death. In the modern society, events in any part of the world can be relayed in real time. TV stations are pouring out new information 24 hours a day, which reduces the time of humans to think and causes loss of humanity eventually. Buddhism and Christianity too take speculation as a course of training. It is because thinking about oneself can change his own human life. It is to let the person be able to think about that time for a while in search for interrelation by himself in his memory and further to recognize the self that is thinking.
Is it a photograph or a picture?
We call the knowledge general moderns know a common sense. In an age when people believed that the sun was turning around the earth, a man expressed his thought against it. He was almost killed. A common sense is such a tremendous belief. People seeing my photograph works are educated for and learn about pictures. They learnt about factors pictures have such as composition, color tone, feel of material, etc., which have become so universal that they become standard of common sense. Accordingly, they see from the photograph I took the factors which they leant were only in pictures and recognize the photograph as a picture because of that. But, though it does not correspond with their common sense, it is clearly a pure photograph, which is called Ambiphoto.
What is Ambiphoto?
A word indicating photographs with ambilaterality which look like picturesque expression. (It is a compound word of ambi-[a prefix indicating both] + photo made in 2005 and used up to now.) A photograph which is recognized as a picture because the photograph image made by shooting light which the photograph has composed the elements of picture (point, line, face, shape, color, feel of material, movement, etc.) closer to a picture than to a photograph. The touch of brush of picture on the photograph was neither by paint nor CG made using a computer.
What is the biggest difference between existing works and my works?
It is the fact that the person seeing my work becomes the part completing the work. Though it does not sound novel, it is the most important and different part which is as follows: In order to extract memory stored in the cerebrum of the person seeing the work, the image was made to have factors of high interrelation and the factors which can be harmful for interrelation such as information corresponding to 'when', 'where' and 'how' which a picture gives are not provided. Of course, there is no title of the work but a number with which the work can be identified. It looks like an artificial photograph because, although it stuck to the records stated for a photograph, it is denying the information proving it. But it is clearly a pure photograph, not an image artificially produced, which gave up its position as a photograph for a work as the thought the person who sees the work can think out is the work at the end. The very small difference obtained from the record of a part of life, thus, is the biggest difference of my work from those of others.
The reason why I make diverse images?
Numerous things happen in a life of a person and leave different meanings to each person. As to a memory recollecting one's mother, someone may not forget the scene of walking on a bridge together with his mother and others, of the book mother gave him as a gift or of the necklace his mother wore. Like this where the subjects are all different though recalling mother is same, there are lots of different parts making memories and living environment of each person is different. As an example, though all people miss their home town, the scenes are all different with each other. Though I have made a lot of images up to now and can continue making them, I can not cover everything.
The reason why I choose the 'Center' as the title for the exhibition?
There is a part named 'recognition' in the conceptual center of the images I make using a camera and that is a factor making the human existence. Recognition forms a part in the wide abstract space of mind and emotional changes are all made depending on the mind. 'Center of mind' indicates the subject of my recognition and means harmony moving around myself, each person respectively, viz. society. We recognize 'fast', 'slow' and 'stop' in the changes of the mutual distance and of the speed as well as of time. I chose 'Center' as the title of this exhibition with an intention to pursue understanding of the fact that there are diverse factors of interrelation of social composition and of the center(mind) of our thought which recognizes the difference with each other at the individual center. As human emotions such as 'pleasure', 'sorrow' or 'loneliness' are decided in the abstract concept called mind after all, the looks of subjects surrounding the works seen from the center of the mind are exhibitions of this time. (Emotion is expressed in an abjective.)
Though I am incorporating everything centered on myself, there is no limitation in the subject matter as I sometimes try to watch things, think and understand expressions in the position of the other party. But, there is mutual relation and me inside it.
- Kwon Duhyeon
On the pictures of Kwon Doohyun, internal experience of combined fortuity and inevitability is persistently expressed in the work. He shows the real world by unrealistically visualizing it through unlimited spirit which arose from a deep cause using diverse ways of expression. The photographing work of Kwon Doohyun which is a progressive picture where literature and music can be newly met momentarily stops animated arts in the aesthetics of instant.
On the picture, the feeling and sensation of that time is expressed, denying the purpose of taking only the shape of itself. It is interpreted that absence can be experienced in his images processed incompletely.
The shape of an image which does not have entity or has lost the entity is expressed in the technology of so-called photograph using meta language. Each spectator is recommended to interpret the photographic image in accordance with his own memory and experience. It is stated that the artist intends to give echo and reverberation to spectators through combination of the afterimage of flickering light and trembling memory.
Kwon Doohyun is showing the method and technique of expression which can remind people of surrealistic world using his unique language which has escaped from the main stream of photographic realism once radically prevailed in modern art.
He shows logical thought in a concept converted into a lyrical image. When his clearly described artist’s note is reviewed, we find that he is expressing what is remembered, reflected and future- imagined about the life which contains moments of lives. Somewhat covert shape which appears on each picture reminds us of meeting with each self. Kwon Doohyun is showing a trace of making more efforts and passion heading toward formative solidity. The center of the mind he described in an excellent sense seems to attempt to search for the value of life by enlightening human emotion and imagination.
2009, 7
Won Ae Kyung, ArtSide
