#2
We have merely shared exhibition ideas at this point, without any paintings to speak of. So there was no reason for me to write this in some artistically grand way. It began out of something akin to trying simply to grab hold of a disappearing space and talk about it. Yet it was also similar to a kind of powerful aphrodisiac. Even without any grandiose titles, the artists here intently pursue different approach from anyone else’s—in their work as well as their lives—and are armed with a sensibility where they keep that roiling of desire constantly present in their hearts, ready to erupt at any time. This was their situation when the space was presented and the artists began to respond. It may be that I was tired of the kind of work where I took a tiny coin someone had dropped in the gallery and turned it into art. For a time, I too was carried away with the idea that the exhibited coin was special when viewed in terms of the specialness of the artist; it may be that I have only just begun to understand that the more artistic signal lies in regarding the coin as just a coin, in picking it up and thinking, “Wow, here’s a coin I picked up. What a windfall!” Instead of an exhibition where I presented things in attractive ways and insisted on their being “art,” I thought a better approach would the kind of exhibition where artists gained something—inspiration, experience, a story—whether they participated or not. An exhibition for artists rather than one for audiences. You never know—it could be the match that creates a spark at some artist’s ignition point. The small ember thus sparked could turn into a volcano, into lava.
# A necessary addendum.
Situated in a flophouse neighborhood where refugees used to live in the 1940s, Epoch Inn’s existence had been imperiled by trends in the Dongdaemun area of Seoul, right up until the time it attracted the notice of the owner of the pub located just before the door leading visitors inside like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. The same could be said for many other places that have disappeared over the years: it was a place for capital, but also a small setting for vulnerable members of the social structure, and in that context a suitable environment for artwork and artists. Existing here is a theme from the poet Choi Young-mi’s Melancholy of the Era with the reinterpretation of figures from a vanished history; voyeurism coexists with death, with plaintiveness, with radiating light and paradoxical colors—something that will be visible to those who view it, even if it is not necessarily defined in terms of any one theme. Long ago, there was a time when this was an active base for feminism and activists with women’s groups, most notably 30 Carat. It was a time when many female artists used their group activities to represent the social reality they faced through their art, to give expression to their cowering inner selves. While the same sort of gender-focused group activists are no longer part of the present times, the exhibition does not negate the presence of that context. It may be seen as a “unit activity” of sorts. The name YokYokYok is based less on the sort of “slam” we deliver to insult someone (one meaning of “yok” in Korean) than on desires (another meaning of “yok”): yearning, craving, appetite, lust, and all our worldly hungers. The choice may be an unavoidable one—for staying true to those “desires” actually leads us to the topic of “women,” who tend comparatively to conceal the desires in their lives. That is not to say that the artists taking part in the exhibition all deliberately adopt “women” as a theme for their work. It would be correct to say that the focus is more on the context in which their previous works are interpreted when brought together by space and theme, or on how the naturally imbued gender roles and relationship with society are reflected. I actually don’t really know about it—about revealing our urges and desires like excreting waste, about the values that inform that. Some of us may not even experience any desires at all, like asexuals. Is it simply as a form of resistance, then? But with some things, there comes a time when you must express them. And I hope that time is now.