This November, Trunk Gallery will be exhibiting SangTaek Oh’s new work, the “City Romance,” which is a prolongation of his “Process” series.
There is a world that the artist himself dreams and wishes of. The gap between this ideal world and the reality is so large, one will be able to overcome the phenomenon just by imagining of the alternative. One actualizes his ideal by thoroughly recognizing the phenomenon, intervening with it, and taking shape to the alternative with the power he has earned from the experience. The phenomenon of the 21st century on Earth, the contemporary people living with them, and their city... The forty-something people who are the main agents of the city, and their hard life.......All these are depicted in SangTaek Oh’s “City Romance” series, reflecting his identity. He clearly suggests the gravity of life of the contemporaries. Or maybe he is fuming his will to escape.
“Sometimes I feel the urge to fly without the physical thoughts. Yet this wouldn’t really be an urge to fly. Perhaps it is a desire of feeling the wind at a high place and to be free, that unattainable longing, the scenery in my heart, or something likewise. I often had such dreams staring at the rooftop of my house.”
- SangTaek Oh’s notes
“City Romance”
The forty-something men on the street with their shoulders drooped. Amid the forest of tall buildings, one man is staring outside through the glass window of his office. He seems to be absent-minded. In fact, these men are living even without knowing of what reality really is. Yet every morning they hear the news on television. The dreadful reality that “The main forties of our times” go through—the livelihood of the contemporaries revealed by the global economic structure, high-tech information system, and battle with multi-layered, limitless competitors—is too heavy for the forties who just raised a family and are trying to start their new life. They fall behind without fraying their nerves, and they have to confront the social system in a rapid pace. All of them pursue the strategy of “It’s either I step on you or remove you.” The faces on the street are serious and gloomy. Black suits, white shirts, pink ties, and heavy laptop bags.... Their faces are pallid. The muscleless bodies appear frail. They are walking on a tree-lined road, or sitting at a bus stop holding a cigarette in their mouths, or dozing off in a train in a midday. They come to me as pity, maybe because my own son is in his forties. There are even more heartbreaking sceneries. The photograph with a man with tottering steps holding an alcohol bottle and yelling loudly beneath the wall of an apartment cannot better describe our society today. The public spirit of the past that used to be distanced from the market theory has collapsed and now is getting managed just by the market theory including the extensive restructuring, an increasing number of jobless people, health care system, problems with public transportations, energy policies, and cultural policies. Their workplaces are pushing them out. Today this polarization, in the ratio of top 20 percent and bottom 80 percent, is worsening. This must be the structure and the policy of the high class societies.
In the world of materialization, the world that’s losing humanity, these souls are shouldering their roles as a son, a husband, and a father, gasping amid the sense of loss and alienation. The sorrow of the forties in the society of new liberalism standing on the edge of a cliff—these are the images in SangTaek Oh’s “City Romance.” They are the phenomenon he wishes to overcome.
