Contemporary art circles have a natural interest in globalism. Globalism is an international issue that was first predicted by Karl Marx when he wrote The Communist Manifesto 150 years ago. He forecast that national independence would be replaced with internationalism and interdependence due to the huge impact of capitalist productivity, and this prediction is true and offers many meaningful social issues even today. Karl Marx was concerned about the brutal and destructive aspect of global capitalism, the negative aspects of which include poverty, devastation of the land, and the destruction of a once-plentiful ecosystem. However, he suggested an unprecedented method to overcome the violent damage of globalism. He insisted that once globalism begins, mankind should not return the helm of history to the former period of globalism but should rather seek another new form of globalization. The new globalization, he suggested, was not based on capital markets but on responsible human behavior.
Using the term, “world literature,” he explained how globalism could be completed through such responsible human behavior. He wrote, ‘A country tilted to one side and with a narrow mind increasingly loses its competence. World literature will come from many other countries and regions.’ In fact, the term, world literature, was first coined by Goethe several decades before Karl Marx appeared. Goethe wanted to create literature criteria, which included less known works from both within and outside of Europe. He also believed that people around the world would increasingly inter-depend on each other in the field of literature as well as in the field of material. The world literature mentioned here indicates none other than the art of the world. The criteria of responsible behavior for globalization lie in spiritual maturity, and since an aspect of spiritual maturity is art, contemporary art is a very important and urgent alternative to globalism.
In spite of the difference between nations, races, and generations, viewers can understand and appreciate certain types of art as an esthetic mechanism penetrates through all cultures. However, this esthetic mechanism can only work when an artist’s sensibility, conflicting with the political and artistic context of a particular society, guarantees sincerity. On the contrary, globalism in a simple superficial form is meaningless because it blindly accepts the form of a specific leading country. The globalization Goethe envisioned a few centuries ago intended for the literatures of all nations to accept each other. Such literary works created through mutual acceptance and excellently reflecting moral human values should also be regarded as cannon. The moral value he declared as most important must be a crystallization of one’s own form when explained in today’s terminology. This crystallization must indicate an embodiment of the spirit of the times in which it was achieved, while artists and the avant-garde spirit, which meaningfully modernize old values, clash with the real outside world.
As American artists thought that the arts in the U.S. were being corroded by capitalism, the famous group ‘October’, which opposed the industrialization of art, was founded in 1976. Its key figures included Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin H. D Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Yve-Alain Bois. They claimed that they opposed the industrialization of the arts, and that we should interpret art based on a thorough integration of philosophy and art and cultural theories. As Ivy-league curators, critics, and intellectuals joined the group, its influence greatly expanded. However, they had a problem in that they failed to understand the importance of the avant-garde spirit, which is the main issue of contemporary art, as they stuck to only an academic investigation on minimalism or abstract-expressionism. While the trend toward the avant-garde disappeared in the cultural areas of North-America, which was established as the strongest power of the 20th century, new followers of the avant-garde began to appear in UK, Germany, Russia, China, India, and so on. In fact, over the 20th century, American artists pursued universalism. They thought that the spirit adapted in America must have also been adapted all over the world. For this, the most important concept they chose was purity. However, purity is not a super concept containing the avant-garde. The avant-garde was the agent of a worldwide problem that tried to transcend the area of the arts and to cover even social, political, gender, race, religion, and ecological areas. Thus, the favored idea of mature globalism is currently found in the avant-garde spirit. Form for form’s sake, or for surface appearance, is nothing but meaningless blindness.
The title of this exhibition is ‘An Odd Place’, which indicates ‘a place where a strange mood hovers.’ This exhibition is held with the intention of confirming how odd the impressions are for viewers when the sensibilities of artists coming from different social environments gather at one place. And how universal and valid are these impressions? I believe that viewers will realize that a real global sensation and meaning is one obtained from a thorough reflection within the world where the artist stands and is an existential form fully revealing the artist’s life.
In fact, the title ‘An Odd Place’ took a thematic hint from Herodotus’ book, “The Histories.” This book contains Herodotus’s world view, in which, with his keen insight, he dissolved the transcendent world found in orally transmitted stories and myths with the real world, such as the history of wars, various episodes of life, and the customs of other nations. Thus, this book handles an aspect of globalization. According to Herodotus, the world where all people live is itself ‘an odd place.’ We can say that he is the first globalist to cover the center of the world and its surroundings, because he saw the world from where he was born and raised, while at the same time accepting the lifestyles and histories of surrounding nations. All of the artists who have joined this exhibition share a similar mind as Herodotus.
Joep Overtoom is a Dutch artist. For his work, rather than painting directly on the canvas, he attaches vinyl tape and then depicts nature using low chroma colors, which reminds viewers of cloudy weather.
Jörg Obergfell is a German artist who describes urban sensibilities felt from urban scenery. For one of his pieces, he placed an image of King Kong between modern urban buildings symbolizing late capitalism, and the violent destruction of capital. Also, his miniature installation using urban waste is impressive, and viewers can witness the transformation of an existential value when urban waste is shifted into an interesting subject, and viewers will also stare at the surprising change the miniatures undergo.
Gorka Mohamed is a Spanish artist who graduated from Goldsmiths in the UK. He must have learned an international sensibility in college, but he reveals the odd mystery of traditional Spanish painting in his pieces. He shows the nature of the main figures in his paintings as they are, but distorts them using damp oil and speedy strokes, which may remind viewers of Joan Miró or Picasso.
Justin Ponmany is a representative artist of India who paints pieces with an avant-garde style. In his work, he deals with conflicts between classes and religions in his home country. He thinks that the narrow mind of humans may be their nature, but he also wonders what the true nature of this narrow mind is, and he endlessly contemplates where to find themes to resolve the conflicts of human life. His hologram paintings show different scenes from different angles. His work does not request viewers to stand at one specific spot. Viewers can feel the phenomena of life from his pieces, which cannot help but changing according to the vantage point from which they are viewed.
Lee Seahyun deals with the territorial division and history of Korea, and shows Koreans’ concurrent dystopic despair and beautiful hope. The characteristic of his painting lies in a methodology that does not adopt Western style. He depicts small lives in mountains and waters, the territorial division of Korea, using a nuance of red, as well as the despair of residents in land destructed by development, which might be called a type of dynamism.
Wil Bolton is a well-known sound artist from the UK. The source of his site-specific art is contemplation and sensibility toward specific locations. A certain site involves many meanings. It not only presents an accumulated historical meaning but also takes in the daily life of the present, its environment, ecosystem, aura, and sensibility ― even including its political and social dynamic relationship. However, when we encounter a site, our attitude toward the place is very fragmentary and cannot help but be limited according to our own personal interests.
Through a contemplation of image and space, Wil Bolton restores the overall vitality of a site by combining the sounds that he obtains there. And he transforms these sounds into a digital form, and arouses the overall meaning of his work through the use of a poetic mood. When we view his pieces, we ask ourselves about the general meaning of the locations and spaces where we live, and find our own answer to these questions. Through this process, many complex meanings are combined with various sentiments.
Makoto Aida is a popular artist of Japan, and mainly covers destructive sexual love and war. Japan’s contemporary artists usually integrate the gloomy complaints of Japanese society into the traditional base of Japanese painting, reflecting the nation’s social mood in which many Japanese people endlessly dig into a certain thing, as the Japanese term ‘otaku(おたく)’ indicates. In particular, Japanese artists fully welcome the Hegelian dialectic, claiming that history can prepare a new base to take off from for a new era when faced with violence, that is, he shares argument of Alexandre Kojeve and Georges Bataille. It seems obvious that Makoto Aida too, has a view that the totality of the world can be recovered through destructive sexual love and war.
Robb Jamieson is an installation artist born in Canada. He throws a sense of pleasant humor into the dishonesty and deception of politics. As he describes normal persons with humor, particularly with a thick feeling of color, the shapes of the persons are distorted and obscured. However, despite these distorted shapes, they give off a certain aura. This artist usually disfigures the faces of his figures, that is, their heads, depicting contemporaries ruled by politics and the media.
Herodotus can be called the first globalist because he thought constantly about his current reality, reflecting on worldwide issues including other surrounding regions as well as his own country. He did not just ignore exotic landscapes and lifestyles, as well as the myths and spiritual world of other races, as weird and complex things, but he dissolved them into one idea. He successfully projected his existence and identity onto the world. The common point the artists who have joined this exhibition share is that they have their own perceptional sovereignties that view and analyze the world using their own existential condition as their indicator. While appreciating their works, viewers will be able to witness an aspect of globalized art, which is the main subject of discussion as we enter into the 2010s.
- Artside Gallery Curator, Lee Jinmyung
