2018 Gyeonggi Creation-Center Artist in Residence : Chun Wooyeon

spiel mein Pianist D-E-A-D D-E-A-D｜Chun Wooyeon｜2010｜

electronic piano, lighting, wood, vinyl curtain, paper

[ Artist Note ] 

My artwork starts with an attempt to break down ‘the invisible 4th wall’which divides the stage and audience. I express interference, collision and coincidence effects created by interactive relation between elements forming space- actors, spectators, images, texts, sounds, lights, movements and etc. with various media. It focuses on the process rather than the explicit clear endpoint. And it reflects the opposition to dichotomous thinking that are particularly prevalent in our society.

< Ignis Fatuus (will o' the wisp) >

Ignis Fatuus (will o' the wisp)｜Chun Wooyeon｜2017｜single channel video, 1’30“(loop)

I see a little light in the darkness. The light source illuminates somewhere like the light of a lighthouse. As if looking for something, it continues to circle all the way round. What a light. At any moment, you can see your hand stretched out in one direction.

The video consists of the continuous movement of the performers wearing head light. In the darkness, no object is seen, but only the others, like me, who is acting like a hand pointing in one direction. Whether we are following the light, or where the light is coming from, the ambiguous situation is as if we are in pursuit of ‘Ignis Fatuus’, one of the confusions between perception and illusion.

< Ein Falttern_zufallsnmae(The flapping name) >

Ein Flattern_zufallsname (The flapping name)｜Chun Wooyeon｜2017｜3 channel video, 9’50“4

'Ein Flattern_zufallsname 'is an interactive sound performance inspired by the work of Heinner Müller ‘Despoiled Shore Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts’, Moving Beat-Interactive Sound Field, Interactive Sound Space, and Interactive Sound Station. A white costume with a hole in the center becomes a stage that fills the space, and the stage becomes an auditory machine that combines sound and text. The collage of sounds and texts makes the stage a 'visual space to hear'.

Through the character of Medea, the writer wanted to include the names of all of us who constantly struggle between the mother, the stranger living in the present, the stranger living in a foreign country, the child of someone, the worker, and the ambiguous boundaries of life and death. The sound of the sewing machine which reacts according to the performance of the performer is like a wind sound. The writer sought to illuminate us, living between the boundless boundaries of 'I'(ich), 'nobody'(niemand), 'nothing'(nichts) and 'no longer me' (nichtmehrich).

[Critique] Temporally Constructing Planes and Spaces (Kim Hae-ju)

A gobo refers to a lens frame that is attached to a stagelight fixture to shape light. For example, to get light out in a clear-cut square-hole gobo in front of a lens. The exhibition title of gobo was taken from this device in the first place. As a frame that makes or undo the contour of an object and thereby decides the shape of light, a gobo can be connected to the medium of video, an image created with light as the medium. Provided that a video is product of light, a gobo that decides its shape may ne the artist’s gaze unto the world. Gobo is also ambiguous as it means ‘lonely walk’ in SIno-Korean. The description of a person walking alone makes the emotional background to the exhibition. The three new video projects created with black-and-white drawings and the installation of a separate sound that flows amdist the videos. The planer operation done with clipped black-and-white prints and hand-drawn animation aldo in black and white. Composed as the colorless variation of black and white or light and darkness, the scene at the exhibition embodies the sentiment of ‘lonely walk’ white the venue is tinctures with. However, the ‘lonely walk’does not mean only the lyrical state of mind that originates from a person’s feelings. It also reflects the artist’s thoughts on the individual-group conflict, the cultural uniformity that fails to consider different speeds of people and so on that she has experienced thought her life including her work experience that she had after she returned to South Korea several years ago. This sentiment is grounded in her critical perception of the reality in which one is not given enough time to tell right from wrong or one gets wept into an unfamiliar situation totally unawares without an opportunity to choose one’s position on a issue. The sense that one feels like one is walking alone at those moments when one is getting away from society underlies the title of ‘lonely walk’. Of course, the sense of such separation is not what the artist alone feels.

The walk follows the rhythm of the traffic signal sound. As they step into the gloomy exhibition hall, viewers get their senses stimulated as much by the sound that surrounds the entire space as by the black-and-white video projects. This sound peals in a certain rhythm as with the crosswalk alarm for blind people. It also includes the metronome sound that ticks at a regular tempo. The sound forms a syncopated rhythm by combining with or disengaging from the motions that show in the video. In ‘Ignis Fatuus’, small lights are in motion, which sheds light on the scene in which dancers repeatedly turn around. In the black-and-white scene, perspective and spatiality are created by the motion of the flashlight-like small, round lights and the dimming of their light, and when illuminated by them, parts of the dancers’ bodies alternate between appearance and disappearance from the screen. Here, the motions of lights or the motions of people are equally fleeting. The turning of the lights and people is presented as engaging and slipping away along the orbit with a certain rhythm as seen in the motions of the stars in some planetary systems. Back and Forth is also a video composed of repetitive motions. One sees the motions of the male and female dancers who roll sideways left and right just like the metronome pendulum while sitting on the floor. By overlapping two different shots of the two persons into one video, the same motions join and disjoin by short intervals at repeated moments. Due to their overlapped images, the people do not so much register their strong presence as strike viewers like illusions of phantoms, which remind viewers of the early cinematic images.

white shadow｜Chun Wooyeon｜2017｜Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Project Gallery

White Shadow, a photo collage, is a planar project but incorporates a kind of editing as with the previous video project. The light area which is created by the round light is filled with black or grey gradation, while the background is flipped to white. This project, which is a patchwork of different photo prints has all captured different moments connected in one single screen, thus forming one single lump as in joining two pieces of film together. Despite the different media, it is an interesting project as there is connection between the themes such as time difference, junction, and the action of light as expressed in the video, and the form.

IN shORT｜Chun Wooyeon｜2014｜Installation Performance, 20minute｜Frankfurter Lab, Germany

IN shORT｜Chun Wooyeon｜2014｜Installation Performance, 20minute｜Frankfurter Lab, Germany

With her Gobo, artist Wooyeon Chun goes full steam in installing the exhibition venue. The artist majored in painting and engraving, but since she studied stage design abroad, her project space has been related mainly with performance. The series of projects which she named as performance-like concert, theater-like performance, or installation-like performance take on the ‘-like’form that sits between different approaches and genres. To elaborate on this characteristic of ‘between’, they may be described as time-based projects where visual expression is emphasized. I addition to performance and other on-stage performances, for the projects that she did while participating in group exhibitions and special exhibitions, she has created devices that required the physical engagement of the audience, such as having the audience pry into something(The Comfort Station),having tap the piano keys to make words instead of sound heard(Spiel Mein Pianist D-E-A-D D-E-A-D), or having them turn devices like spinning wheel. In this light this ‘Gobo’exhibition makes an opportunity for the artist to try two things that set themselves apart from her previous projects. First, audience, performers, and instrumental performers participate to handle movements shown in a video of planar project instead of a project that creates movements transpiring before one’s eyes. Second, she creates an exhibition venue as an integrated experiential structure by directing the whole space for the first time. She does not personally operate and actuate the device for a project, but she creates experiences as events in the viewing of the exhibition with sound and video. Her project shows the conversion in which the experience in constructing time and scenes for performance is reflected in the direction of the exhibition, just as the temporal construction in video makes it to the planar realization in White Shadow.

The white wind｜Chun Wooyeon｜2014｜ wood, cotton cloth, lighting｜1000(w)x1000(d)x1600(h)mm

Biography of Artist