April the Eternal Voyage

Period/ 2016.04.16(Sat) ~ 2016.06.26(Sun)

Hosted by Gyeonggi-do, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation
Organized by Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan-si
In Partnerships with 416 Sewol Families for Truth and A Safer Society, 416 Memory Archive
Supported by Samhwa Paints

Artists: Sindae Kang, Hong-Goo Kang, Yongju Kwon, Sangdon Kim, Suntag Noh, Choonghyun Roh, Euntae Park, Jaedong Park, Yongsun Suh, Photographers Who Remember MV Sewol, Kyuchul Ahn, Seahyun Lee, Yunyop Lee, Minseung Jang, Eun Chun, Su Hyun Jeon, Jin Kyoung Jun, Sohee Cho, Sook Jin Jo, Jeong Hwa Choi, Hochul Choi, Soun Hong

Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art presents April: the Eternal Voyage, a memorial exhibition conceived to remember the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster and to console their families and friends who lost their loved ones. For the past two years, our museum has prayed alongside bereaved families at the Government Joint Memorial in Hwarang Recreation Park, and has organized this exhibition to support the families as they attempt to resume their lives. The exhibition has invited 22 Korean artists/ artist groups from different generations and genres featuring works that the artists recorded and interpreted from their perspective.
The works featured in this exhibition are categorized into three topics – “To Accompany,” “To Remember,” and “To Record.” The first theme “To Record” is presented as “artistic conduct archive” which is a collection of artists’ conducts that represented the social solidarity through artistic practice. “To Remember” is comprised of works that reflect our society and lives seen by Korean artists through the Sewol ferry disaster. Lastly, “To Accompany” features new projects that question how the artists will cherish the memories of the victims and live with the memories of the tragedy.

April: the Eternal Voyage raises questions on the role of art in contemporary society characterized by the loss of empathic ability, and through this, poses the fundamental question of “what is art?” The contemplative works of the artists seeking to console the sorrows and wounds of the bereaved, while facing the collective anger and fear, sincerely question the role of art since the occurrence of the disaster — what art needs to embody and express, and how art is to interact with the contradictory society.

Exhibition Description

Sindae Kang

0416 Real-time, 2016, socially produced images, real-time image acquisition algorithm, dimensions variable

Sindae Kang’s 0416 Real-time randomly displays online images related to the Sewol ferry in real-time by utilizing computer algorithms. Images are shown randomly, but they can be said to have been selected by the artist through keywords that he had chosen. The logic of keywords and algorithms of this work demonstrate that the act of collection has a political and subjective disposition that is dependent on the view of the one who carries out the act of selection. 0416 Real-time, as explained by the artist himself, is a work that grasps “the logic of images dominating daily life” by rearranging the numerous images that had been revealed in the media following the incident into keywords.

Hong-Goo Kang

Gwanghwamun, 2014, text, pigment print, 100x200cm

Hong-Goo Kang has created works that reveal the stratagem of photography by distorting the legend of the camera. Kang’s world of art characterizes his unique sense of humor featured in all of his works and the unusual perspective on familiar landscapes can be observed in Window. He captures the pained shrieks of a cold city through Edvard Munch’s The Scream on an old flyer attached to one side of the window. Yet, that is also the end of his sense of humor. His astute sense of humor in Gwanghwamun and Sewol encounters this tragedy with repetitions of the grand contradiction of reality mixed with rage and self-deprecation.

Yongju Kwon

Slanted, 2016, paint on timber, 1,500×60×420cm, 180x50x50cm

Yongju Kwon designed and produced the walls and archive structures installed in the gallery space of April the Eternal Voyage. He visualizes the anxiety and fear that had been created by the Sewol ferry tragedy through the emptiness of the exhibition hall of the Museum in resemblance to a ferry and the diagonal walls and unstable chairs installed within the hall. His design, recreating the search and rescue operations through desks and lights of the archive space resembling the illegally enlarged area of the ferry, includes both physical and psychological inconveniences recalling the painful memories of the tragedy. Through the space, Kwon urges us not to forget about these sad and painful memories.

Sangdon Kim

Monument Zero #2, 2014, inkjet print, 130x87cm

Sangdon Kim’s Monument Zero is a “memorial” to the absence of reality space symbolized by the absence of the future and the present and moreover a sinkhole in deviation from the orbit of time arising from the Sewol ferry disaster. The artist claims, “Amidst the Sewol ferry tragedy and the emergence of a sinkhole, I confirmed that there was an active form created by “absence.” This absence is different from mere nothingness, and it is a sensually clear and active existence.” TORMA ANTENNA, which is the link between objects and people standing in the exhibition hall yet is unable to receive transmissions, strongly attests to this empty void in society.

Suntag Noh

Drought #CFF0106, 2015, pigment print, 155×110cm

A critic once referred to him as the “moaning artist.” This nickname was probably given to him to describe how the artist captures and records the conflict-ridden sites behind his gun-like camera as if he is moaning. Suntag Noh’s photographs, which are close-up detail captures of a given site, establish the viewer as a new agent of interpretation on the boundary between art and record. The Drought series recording the site following the Sewol ferry disaster solely captures columns of water of the site that is rampant with water cannons. Of course these water columns will not be able to ease the drought within our mind. Through this work, the artist metaphorically alludes to reality of the political drought.

Choonghyun Roh

After a Play Ends, 2015, oil on canvas, 194x260cm

It is not important where the spaces depicted in the works of Choonghyun Roh are designated. As the artist claims, we detect a certain energy of Korean society embedded in the space presumed to be a particular stage. We observe a prosaic landscape that the artist had delved into up until now in Ladder 1 reminiscent of a tool for rescue that is about to collapse and After a Play Ends, resemblant of the aftermath of a failed circus. The space depicted by Roh looks like a realistic space yet becomes a motif that reminds one of a landscape that “awakens the inhumane and senseless reality” that is hidden underneath.

Euntae Park

Waiting People, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 187x454cm

Euntae Park’s Miracle on the Han River reveals the frailty and incompetence of Korean society that the Sewol ferry tragedy had invoked. He depicts the vain and absurd reality that had been hidden behind the legend of modernization known as the “Miracle on the Hangang River” through the image of the Sewol ferry sunk in the Hangang River. Park, whose work had focused on the people marginalized by the modernization process of the Korean society, now depicts “waiting people” ever since the disaster. Such people in waiting are not only the families of the victims but also us who had anxiously awaited the return of the missing people and moreover those awaiting amidst numerous difficulties.

Jaedong Park

Never Forget You, Sewol Student Victims at Danwon High School, 2014–2015, digital print, dimensions variable

Editorial cartoonist Jaedong Park collaborated with newspaper The Hankyoreh on the “Never Forget You” series and presented to each of the bereaved families of the student victims of Danwon High School a portrait of their loved ones. His portraits were placed in the rooms of the student victims and appear in the Rooms of the Children series, also on display in the exhibition. The artist discloses that he seemed to have grown closer to the children while painting them. He advises, as a practice of an artist, that we especially remember the children, expressing the view that “if we call out their names and remember each and every one of them, then they will be able to have another life.”

Yongsun Suh

2014 News and affair, 2014, acrylic on wood board, 272x585cm

Unable to blot from his mind the desperate look of a boy looking out the window of the ferry, the artist roamed around Paengmokhang, following the Sewol ferry disaster. His brush, depicting groups of people wandering about the city and the scene of history, was led to painting the hopelessly blue waters and white tents on the port and the funerals of the victims and their families. While watching news special on the first year anniversary of the disaster, he, once again, picked up his brush to paint the victim families who had been driven out to the streets. Through the documentary-like works, we are able to perceive the profound grief of the artist in his direct encounter with the Sewol ferry tragedy.

Kyuchul Ahn

Reading for Our Children, 2016, sound installation, dimensions variable

At the distant end of a narrow alley is a person reading something. A room where we can observe and hear this person reading—the artist designed a project expressing the tribute to the Sewol ferry disaster through the act of reading “a book on beauty, on youth and friendship, on endurance, sadness, and contemplation, and on love.” He suggests the reading be carried out hoping that our voices will one day reach far in the distance to those who are so greatly missed.

Seahyun Lee

Between Red-015AUG01, 2015, oil on linen, 250x250cm

Seahyun Lee, inspired by the unrealistic and fearful red-hued landscape of the demilitarized zone that he had observed through a fluoroscope while serving in the military, began painting red landscapes. His landscapes feature fragments of dreams, imagination, and reality, which are weaved together to comprise a whole. Like dreamy landscapes characterized by the overlapping of chronological order and absence of space partition, the canvas embodies diverse narratives. Between Red features the image of Paengmokhang within its gorgeous landscape, and such landscape embodies the sadness and pain embraced by the beautiful mountains, streams, plants, and trees of Korea.

Yunyop Lee

Crying woman, 2015, woodcut, 210x300cm

Yunyop Lee, who has occupied a central place in social issues, at times, in the form of satires, and at other times, of children’s stories and sharp condemnations, depicts the memories of the Sewol ferry disaster through crying people. It is difficult to estimate the depth of sadness of the people even by the representations of these people squatted on their haunches and wailing with hands covering their faces. How much more do they need to cry to stop their tears? The works embody the hopes of the artist that the tears will not just be tears of their own, but tears of sympathy and companionship.

Minseung Jang

A withered field, 2014, silk-screen printed on water soluble paper, pebbles from Jeju, ellipsoid spot light, 29×42×8cm 6pcs each, dimensions variable

Minseung Jang expressed his commemoration of the Sewol ferry tragedy with restrained gestures and writing. “… the snow we saw together, would it have fallen in the same way this year? the waves are frigid, and the waterfowl, too, are unable to fall asleep … tears that will disappear when attempted to take by hand, scalding eyes” (Haiku, A Withered Field). He printed this poem on water soluble paper, installed it on top of pebbles, and sent it to the victims. The seascape featured in Snow We Saw, a nightscape of a beach, reminds of the reality in which the sea is no longer merely the sea.

Eun Chun

Spring is the cruelest season – Magnolia and forsythia II, 2014–2016, archival pigment print, 120x80cm

Whoever said that April is a cruel month? April, the season in which spring begins to enjoy full bloom and buds sprout, become a really cruel month in Korea. The flowers—cherry blossoms, forsythia, and magnolia—depicted in the artist’s works blossom in April without exception, and we will remember the Sewol ferry in April without exception, together with pity for the youth who never had the chance to blossom.

Su Hyun Jeon

Daehwa, 2014, single channel video, 9 min 30 sec

The artist’s camera, which lacks the courage to capture Paengmokhang, instead captures the peaceful sea across the port. This serenity is imbued with a somewhat wretched, suppressed silence and sadness. Boats pass by with sounds of the foghorn and winds blow across the sea while the occurrence of a pandemonium on the other side, yet nature heartlessly goes on. The impellent peacefulness of this tranquil landscape that will seemingly disappear like a mirage reminds us of the reality that is exactly the opposite.

Jin Kyoung Jun

Kiss, 2014, charcoal powder on paper, 70 × 53 cm

The hands of a child removing the hair stuck on the face of his sick mother, the kiss a mother gives child with her hands covering his face. Jin Kyoung Jun commemorates the Sewol ferry tragedy through the infinitely large loving touches and “kiss” of parents toward their children. The artist grimly expresses what this social tragedy had taken away through black-and-white drawings. Why has it become such an era in which talking about simple truths in life— recovering emotions that comprise the fundamentals of our lives known and “love,” capturing and rendering gratitude the splendid moments of expressing love, and sympathizing and consoling others’ sadness—has become so difficult?

Sohee Cho

Bongsunhwa Prayer 304, 2016, installation, dimensions variable

Bongsunhwa Prayer 304, expressing the pain, grief, and anger embedded in the hopes of mankind by capturing the hands of people praying—with fingernails colored with the bongsunhwa (garden balsam) flower extract, has been an ongoing project for the artist since 2014. If the works up until now had featured paintings by a single individual, the 304 hands participating in this particular work represent a shared prayed embodying the pain, anger, and lamentation resulting due to the Sewol ferry tragedy. This project was made possible by the active participating of the 304 people, and their prayers hint at the hopes for sympathy and solidarity. The space where the 304 hands of the exhibition introduction was installed leads the viewers to achieve purification through prayers.

Sook Jin Jo

The Face of Heaven, 2016, LED, 304 holes on panel, sound, paint, mixed media, 300×1100×75cm
Sound: Excerpts from “Elixir”, Derek Bermel
Subtitle: “When he shall die take him and cut him out into stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” – William Shakespeare.

The space shines hazily thro ugh the light beaming through the hole in the wall. For the Face of Heaven, as the title of the work, we imagine a resplendent light beyond the wall. Or perhaps “the face of heaven” is the image of small lights shining like stars in this place that has a wall in between. The work of Sook Jin Jo, embodying a children’s story-like condolence that a person becomes a star when he or she dies, consoles families for the deaths of the victims of the Sewol ferry tragedy and talks about a new generation that extinction bears.

Jeong Hwa Choi

Breathing flower, 2016, fabric, air blower, Ø 1,000 cm

Jeong Hwa Choi presents Breathing Flower, a work offering and producing flowers at the memorial altar in Ansan that had been swept by the Sewol ferry tragedy. The black lotus blossomed like the symbol of the most beautiful revenge raised from the dirt will keep the altar company across the exhibition period. Young Flower, featuring the image of a constrained robot unable to stand up despite trying and crowns above resplendent tin foil ascending to the sky, embodies the suffocation and pity of having to witness the deaths of the radiant youth and the stumbles of society.

Hochul Choi

20.최호철, 이루지 못한 귀향, 90×100, 디지털 프린트, 2015

The Unfulfilled Homecoming, 2015, pen on paper, mixed media on digital colored print, 90x100cm

Hochul Choi’s Winter Landscape in front of Danwon High School and The Unfulfilled Homecoming depict the landscape of Danwon High School located behind the Museum in great detail. He presents the sudden tragedy that hit the Ansan region in his unique style of depiction. The imaginary landscape of the students returning home from their school trip and the landscape in front of the school that seems more dreary, knowing that it is from imagination, demonstrate a strong contrast.

Soun Hong

Ordinary Monument, 2015, oil on canvas, mixed media, 210x460cm, 210x167cm, 210x285cm, dimensions variable

Ordinary Monument is a work featuring trivial objects that the artist collected along the Paengmokhang covered in plastic wrap, installed together with the painting depicting those objects. Hong, who had worked to discover meaning from areas that had been marginalized or belittled within a landscape known as “soundscape,” created an “ordinary monument” by covering the small objects that had witnessed the tragedy as if shrouding a corpse. Then the monument was painted onto a large canvas like a triptych altarpiece. This work, which started off from the sense of sorrow and guilt felt as the older generation, is an act of commemoration that could only be carried out unconsciously.

Photographers who Remember MV Sewol

Suntag Noh, The room of Danbi Lee in class 10, 2015, pigment print, 90x60cm

22-2.세월호를 생각하는 사진가들(1)

This series is comprised of works capturing the rooms of the children as part of the “personal record collection” project of the victims of the Sewol ferry tragedy taken by photojournalists and art photographers including Jinhwon Hong and Suntag Noh.

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