We begin our discussion on social landscape. We encapsulate a variety of stories about society, discovering aspects of society hidden by time.

It is important to grasp change and understand what changes and change occurs in our society today. This can be a way for artistic expression or a means for communication. Painting or drawing is one of the traditional art genres displaying human consciousness. Art in the past assumed the role of revealing or fixing one’s social status. As industrialization progressed, the arts representing the self-consciousness of the bourgeoisie - the class that gained power with capital - emerged. The arts were enjoyed not only by the nobility but also by the general public, and artists began acting as social spokespersons. And, artists presented social ideas through their work, but art was not an accurate reflection of social aspects: artists commented on social aspects through themselves, conveying their own narratives through society. They hoped the public themselves could communicate with society rather than reflecting social criticism and phenomena. 

A work of art no longer displays any utopian or imaginary reality but showcases ways of existence or social truths in existential reality. The artist reviews the vein of social life from his or her individual life, contemplating the environment pertaining to the present. It demonstrates facts rather than reflecting social phenomena accurately. Like a mirror’s reflection, it reflects the everyday as it is. As a mirror-scene can be familiar and unfamiliar to us, social aspects are also familiar and unfamiliar to us with a mixture of individual and social life.

This exhibition contains emotional social landscape rather than ideological social scenes through works on show, trying to commune and communicate with social aspects in which we inhabit. In our society we all take note of the same situation. We intend to discover familiarity and novelty by showing reality as it is, rather than displaying the newness of a utopia or an imaginary world. We mention that we are inextricably bound up with society and art.

The social landscape artists view is not based on our widely accepted social ideas but the world each individual views. We question social aspects in which we reside through social scenes we feel familiar and unfamiliar simultaneously. What is a social landscape formed through a weaving of each individual’s consciousness, behavior, and thought, and the scene hidden under such a social landscape?
- Lee Yoon-jung, Curator of LIG ART SPACE

*image (left)
© Hye-In Lee
courtesy of the artist