The innocent face suffused on the skin of stone
Park, Young-taek (Professor at Kyonggi University, Art critique)
Park, Dae-jo's previous works have chased the trace of mountains and waters along with the texture of the pattern by using natural pattern and colors of landscape paintings and marbles using indian inks. But his latest works are developed in a very different point. Instead of work using a marble objet and drawing by his feelings, he is using photos. Readymade which is a photo and a stone which is a objet are used and the photo is put on the marble surface using the unique device and produced and by doing so, new scene and new situation are made. A photo is one of the painting materials and materials like marbles/stones and surface are still attractive materials and function as his own working language and methodology as well. Above all, it is noticeable that he interestingly developed the independent photo state by combining photo images with paintings and putting this on the stone/the skin of stone. It gets out of the general photo print technique and progresses to the new point which is a photo objet or materialization of photo and fragmentation.
He took a photograph of children's faces and enlarged it. Children look at us with their big eyes open. The children's big eyes get nearer in a full scale. Immaculately clear and pure soul hangs over the children's looks. The viewer's eyes and the child's eyes are placed on the same point. This face and big eyes in the black and white photo stare at us in silence. In the pupils of anonymous children, another scene is involved and two major kinds of images are drawn or collaged. First, landscapes which imply wars or fearful situations that is eschatological and fin de siecle situations are the scenes. Images which show wars and terrors, Ecological destruction and environmental pollution etc. happening constantly in the world erupt like fire, like a flash in the eyes of young and good child. In the monotone photo image, especially that part came out well, keeping intense and eye-catching colors. The viewers can analogize the inner mind and feelings of a child who just looks at the scene in silence with immaculately clear face and defenselessly. Children just look at the tragedy and calamity the grown-up world committed. However, the resulting cost and damage completely came down to these children's shoulders.
In one axis, there are conflicting images. Those are metaphorical images about bright, positive and optimistic future. The extreme world picture and realistic situation happen in turn in front of the pupils of children. While the images sunk instead of the iris of pupils project the front scenes which the children are looking reflected on the pupils, they are fictitious landscape production which shows tragic and positive world picture that the children face. To him a photo is used as a medium which strongly suggests the real situation and revives images which effectively express working topics as well. Photos are intervened as effective objet images to sharply criticize and reveal many conflicts and realistic critical minds of modern society. At the same time, to him who is used to indian ink, black and white photo images are connected to the similar sense of beauty.
On the other hand, the infant's face which the artist expressed can be seen as peace and silence of ideal human figure which human beings pursue and is innocence and naivety, too. Lao-tzu said that 'truth is like a log gourd which doesn't process anything and is innocence itself.' Chuang-tzu also said that 'courtesy is a secular fabrication and truth is from the heaven so saints model the heaven so they consider truth precious and do not stick to mundane world. Nature which doesn't stick to secular courtesy is none other than innocence. He thought that as people grow up, they get wisdom and learn technical skills and are adapted to secular courtesy so they go through the process of losing original innocence. Therefore in the Orient, to preserve innocence considered as the real truth. In Taoism, a true man which calls the best ideal human is the same meaning. So a true man longs for the early history at which wisdom and technical skills are not developed and pursues innocent children's state which are not imbued with secular courtesy. Therefore, innocence calls the mind of a child after all. To restore the mind of a child is to get to the truth.
Park, Dae-jo put children's faces which have looks of children's minds and innocent and pure soul on the skin of stone which is natural material. With the background of children's faces which have big and clear pupils, sealed lips, unknown looks, faces with no feelings, he creates a story structure setting up another scenery in it. The scenes entered in his eyes make various narrations.
Above all, it's very interesting for me that the artist put the photo image on the marble surface in the independent methodology. A photo is an image glued to the skin of a photographic paper. It is a time fixed mark and image drawn by the light. It is the evidence of absence and three dimensional world put on two dimensional screen. A photo inhabits on the skin of thin photographic paper. But the photos of Park, Dae-jo go together with the skin of stone, marble. First, after he artist takes a photograph of the objects and processes them using Photoshop and changes them into glay scale, he inserts images in the part of pupils. He coverts these into DPZ and prints them into OHP film. After that, he exposes them to the blue light for 1 or 2 minutes and plates and transcribes them with a sensitive film TOHP. After developing and drying them using water pressure, he sticks the sensitive film to stone, marble skin. And he finishes them through carving and painting. The photos finished through complicated and tiresome process are unlike the traditional photos.
The image is put and carved on the surface of stone and like growing in the stone as well. Photographic images with stones are embossed carving with solid texture, transparent surface and uniform thickness. He derives walking and visual experience over time which makes the viewers observe the images on the floor wandering by installing danglingly the photographic images which inhabit on the skin of the stone on the wall or on the floor with many pieces. The examples are the visual scenes that the scenes looked from right to left show each individual scene through the screen erecting each dimension with slightly slanting slide. It is a kind of a transformed screen made Jabara style wall as a model and the image appears and hides depending on the angles of viewers due to this. The picture looking differently depending on the viewing angle is, it is accepted differently according to the position and perspective of the individual even if it is the same image. Invisible in the front, but the scene which should be looked on the side on the skew is the interesting visual experience and is a critical context about prejudice about things and world through each one's own fixed, uniform eyes and the custom that we see things as well.
A stone is the substance that implies the texture of persistence and strongness and remote time. That substance includes weak children's faces and eyes. In fact, drawing and carving weak flesh and finite lives of human beings on the stone is the desire to overcome finite lives of human beings and fear about disappearance as a stone. It may be the origin of the image. Park, Dae-jo made a new screen by combining the material with photographic image. The work was done by combining oriental traditional ideology and the mark of material with the high-tech methodology and showed calamity and fear unconcernedly caused by modern civilization in the innocent children's faces/eyes in it.
Park, Dae cho
M.F.A in Korean Painting major, Graduate school of Art & design Sang-myung University Citation
Present Ph.D. Art & Design Department, Sang-myung University
Selected One Person Exhibitions
2010 'Hope' Invitational opening exhibition of Gallery Jinsun
‘Innocence Lost’( Chelsea Art Museum )
2009 solo exhibition at Omaso gallery in Spain
Invitational opening exhibition of Jung gallery, Shin-sa
Opening exhibition of Stanza gallery
`INEART-The Heart of Child (Dolls)' invited by Shin ju ku Gallery Hoshi
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 'Window-new Turkey edition'(Gail art museum)
"LIFE IS LIFE"(Namsong art museum)
2010 'beautiful mountains and streams'(Han ga ram art museum)
2010 'Paint a dream'(Uijeong-bu art museum)
2010 'Dreaming'(atelier aki)
2010 'I love star' at Gangnam-gu office
2010 ‘Young artist collection Exhibition’ at Gallery Jinsun
2009 "The vision of a young-contemporary art" at Ggyeng-nam art museum
2009 'Blue Dot Asia' at Seoul Arts Center, Seoul
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