Maden Pictures 13
Arario Gallery Cheongdam is pleased to present Maden Pictures 13 as the gallery’s first exhibition of 2013, from January 15th to March 3rd, 2013. Showing photography and video works, this exhibition is an extension of Maden Pictures, a group photography exhibition organized by Arario Gallery Cheonan in 2010.
Maden is a new coinage which puts together the word ‘Made’ (past participle of ‘make’) and letters ‘en’. Invented as a tool of representation, photography is no longer limited to the traditional range but is being actively applied as a medium of various concepts today. While photography developed from the ‘aesthetics of moment’, which highlights the documentary function of the medium, contemporary artists have transcended the chance element and documentary aspect of photography, to infinitely exploring ways of creating new works. As such, the completely and passively staged scenes in the photographic and video works in the exhibition correspond to the meaning of the word ‘Maden’.
The figures and backgrounds in the works in the exhibition do not assume a chance situation, but present their own fascinating story. Connoting different times and spaces, people from individuals to groups in various circumstances fuel the viewer’s curiosity. Groups of girls in school uniforms impose a certain action in Hyun-Jin Kwak’s work, emanating an unidentifiable sense of melancholia which contrasts starkly with the beautiful background of Sweden. Ayoung Kim’s work PH Express is based on the British invasion of Geomundo Korea in 1995. In this work, actors perform the daily life of the British soldiers at the time, retracing a fascinating event in history. The figures in Hyun-doo Park’s photograph appear alone in brilliant TV broadcasting sets, demonstrating a severed and isolated sense of the individual. Yongseok Oh’s new space-time created by joining irrelevant images and film scenes of similar spatial context raises a question on the authenticity and fictitiousness of the image. Figures in Sung Eun Chang’s work fill a specific space through gestures like standing in a row on the streets, or entering an envelope. Chang conveys stories about the spaces in the daily life in which we live, through ways that only humans can perceive and measure.
Maden Pictures 13 presents the characteristic works of five artists who transform photography and video into a synthesized art form. These works retrace the countless hours of labor-intensive production process that take place before pressing the shutter or record button. Simultaneously, works which stage objects and figures by rearranging separate spaces like film and theater provide an opportunity for us to contemplate upon the fundamental meaning of photographs that surpass the element of chance and arrive at the significance of new work. The transformed and processed space-times in the works at times connect with different space-times, expanding infinitely and demonstrating boundless possibilities.
