Straightly organized paths, curvy roads passing by slopes, ups and downs, shortcuts and detours… roads are like life. Whether it may be strolling through the fragrant gardens, feeling the fresh breeze, or whether it may even be a troublesome journey through the thickets, there are times when we rush like lightning to reach our destinations, perhaps even get lost and wander, and stop to look around. Whether alone or accompanied with a companion or friend, whoever they may be, we are always on the road somewhere.
The start for Kyung Hyounsoo was always a road. During his graduate school years, the ladder over his dark, gloomy work was definitely a metonymical road, a symbol of life. Especially how the ladder was connected from the ground to the ceiling, it was like an endless craving for salvation, an expression of a stifling reality with no exits. His ladder infinitely increased, dividing space, constructing structures, and forming the world. His ‘ladder world’ was a utopia with pleasure and fun, without the work, money, duties, or rules, an imaginary world surpassing certain time and space. To Kyung Hyounsoo, his work was a dream squeezing through the cracks of tight life and prying open the space of ladders.
With this type of context, expanding his work to atlases and maps is not a coincidence. The map is a basic drawing of paths, a downscale of the world. In it are nature, the city, people, and life. There is no abstractive collection of codes on the map, for it is a present-tensed abridgement of life. Especially the shapes of roads on the map, they are quite familiar with this type of life. They may be abstractive, but those roads are naturally created to interact with surrounding terrains, representing a realistic change of today. Thus, such roads and paths may seem as though they are peacefully in harmony, however they are actually in heightened tensions to keep such balance. Such competitions of facing surrounding powers and growing their own energies result into these curves. That is why roads on maps are not helpless lines on the ground. They are condensed forms of present, energetic veins, with the power of life squirming in them. One of the many reasons why Hyounsoo extracts forms of roads on maps is because of their ulterior, internal power, rather than their typological beauty. The tension you can feel in debris – Melbourne Airfield clearly explains such energy. The series which look like light waves from the planes preparing for takeoff at night seem to strongly pull each other. Such balance formed from forceful containment creates growing energy and tension in his picture.
Before explaining Kyung Hyounsoo’s series of debris, we must look over on how he does his works. His work is based on set data retrieved after transforming road forms in certain places through Illustrator on his computer. This is how the debris came up with such places like Melbourne Airfield and the Gyeongbu Expressway. You may happen to see that the minute details may differ with the main forms, but these are literally ‘crumbs’ from the maps, only their sizes enlarged. Just like you cannot analogize the whole form just by the cellular tissue derived from the living organism, it is difficult to find the formal similarities to Melbourne Airfield and Gyeongbu Expressway within the debris. However, each minute cell tissue has their own circular organic chromosome, and through the DNA in these chromosomes can you tell the genetic data of the main organism. Just like that, debris contain the actual DNA and life of the Melbourne Airfield and Gyeongbu Expressway.
The important point is that the Kyung Hyounsoo performs a type of transformation on these forms through computerized programming, thus importing such forms into his computer, selecting and cutting out the lines, deleting them, partially editing, and creating several clashes of data, forming a coincidental transformation of ‘particles.’ This process is like a scientist performing genetic manipulation, remodeling the main organism and creating a similar life form. Although the forms begin from nature through the expanded hands of the artist, through computer, they are created into a new life form with different, new form different from its natural look.
Eventually, the debris series contain a new organic feeling, a different sensation of life compared with the natural organic vitality; this is a new, high-tech sensation with sharp, mechanic materiality. Therefore, the debris – Gyeongbu Expressway is like a future organic figure from sci-fi movies, which can be comprehended through this context. Their forms resembling humans or insects are a type of mimic life forms, the only images created by the artist through mechanical operation. It may seem as if we have already seen, however, as a result, they resemble to nothing with nature, as they are only artificial beings gaining life in the artist’s masterpiece. Such artificial feelings have been emphasized with elaborate calculations of colors such as blue, neon yellow, green, and stunning red. The friendly but somewhat awkward feeling from his work, the coexistence of fresh, throbbing vividness of now and the unexpected, unfamiliar future is the complete result of his combination of nature and technology, images of reality into virtual transformation.
Meanwhile, the debris series show a certain formation of blueprints of future cities or even starships. As it is not a still shape, there is a rotation of a fixed axis upon the infinite white space the artist precisely filled. This may be why his debris series remind us of works from early 20th century Russian artists like Laszlo Moholy-nagy. Early 20th century Russian revolutionist artists dreamt of a future new world with a highly advanced civilization through scientific technology. Their beliefs that advanced science technology would open a new prologue to a universal era made them plan a futuristic urban space beyond the present with mechanical and perfect, abstract lines, and proposed a silhouette of a floating starship in universal space. The structure floating in the white, infinite space is what brings Kyung Hyounsoo and the Russian artists together. If the revolution of destructing world structures and prying open the tight lifestyle to make space for art is their differences, then I can say that the dream world beyond now, utopia through art is their similarities. Kyung Hyounsoo’s debris series express such context, a new version of utopia differing with his ‘ladder world’, and the dream of utopia upon the road in the reality of the 21st century.
The Dream of Utopia
on the Road
About Kyung Hyounsoo
Miyeon Park (History of Art)
