DIVISION, THE VISION

HARMONY IN DIVISION

 

This exhibition deals with the theme that, despite the reality of Korea living in a divided land, we can eventually reach “harmony” as long as we see a hope-oriented future. A variety of messages and discourses expressed by five artists such as PARK Seungsoon (abstract installation), LEE Dongchun (photography), CHOI Eunjeoung (sculpture installation), RHEE Joohyeong (flat painting), and JUNG Jaechul (abstract figure painting) are ultimately focused on “hope” and “harmony.” 

 

A work installed in a circular panel with photos of the sky scenes of North Korea sent by 40 citizens through the event, “Sky of Hope” that took place before the exhibition is placed as a Photo Zone at the entrance. This reminds us of the fact that South and North Korea consist of a single nation living under the same sky.

 

Based on harmony between Odusan Unification Tower and Gallery Bakyoung, which share the regionality of “Paju” in Gyeonggi-do, we hope that the power of culture and art can blossom conveying warmth and bright energy to people living in a society of tension, and expect that this can serve as an opportunity to bring a true moment of peace to the Korean Peninsula. 

 

The special works of distinction 

🔸 PARK Seungsoon (plane, painting, installation) – In accordance with the artist’s characteristic abstraction, the 13 Provinces of the Korean Peninsula, which have been divided for the past 70 years, were brought onto the 13 small canvases. Based on acrylic paint and oil paint, that is, water and oil, the materials that hardly mix with each other, the artist intends to represent the realistic situation of the South and the North, while portraying the Korean Peninsula united in warm colors imbued with the hues of spring and summer. For pictorial expression, the artist embraces the ardent wish for unification and peace by inviting diversified colors, beyond the normative colors bound to the so-called unification theory. The objet arranged in the Taegeuk pattern symbolizes a variety of aspects of the Korean Peninsula depicted by the artist.

 

🔸 LEE Dongchun (photo) – She is a photographer who explores in-depth images and diversified facets of four seasons of the head family and Hanok in Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do. For the artist, the Hanok of Andong is the embodiment of the hometown of North Korea of her parents as displaced people in the past. Based on this imagery and belief that Hanok, the traditional Korean building, is the only form of housing that remains in both parts of Korea, she continuously carries out her photographic work. While depicting the hometown that parents would have missed, the artist expresses the oneness of the South and the North, based on the appreciation of the objects of traditional relics wishing for unification, special feelings for Hanok that arouses nostalgy towards her parents, and the particular concept of clan (family blood union) and yangban culture in Hamgyeong-do. 

 

🔸 Choi Eunjeoung (Sculpture, Installation) – At the Odusan Unification Tower, the closest location to the very site of division, which invites the view of the sky over the North Korean side, the artist presents the works depicting the wishes of both citizens and displaced people who harbor the pain of the country’s division and the hope of unification. Through the photographs of the sky over North Korea, which had been selected through the public contest before the exhibition, based on the artist’s distinctive work method, she exhibits the sky view over North Korea that the displaced people fervently long for. It is placed as a Photo Zone at the entrance of the exhibition hall.

 

🔸RHEE Joohyeong (flat, painting) – After setting the relationship between the two Koreas, which had been in a state of long confrontation, as “night,” the artist presents a special work named "The manifesto at night" with which the wish for peaceful unification is metaphorically expressed in speech bubbles, which are considered the artist’s signature icon. Another special work of his named “Landscape with Gaema Plateau,” is an expression of the desire to visit the Gaema Plateau, the presence that had never been visited, once the unification is attained someday. By transforming the location seen in “Landscape With Shifting Sands” series, which portrays a longing for a place never visited, into “Gaema Plateau,” the artist counted on a drawing technique with strong physical properties, which is not the artist’s usual technique, but the one that tends to squash or peel off the canvas. 

 

🔸 JUNG Jaechul (flat, painting, lenticular) – The artist, who pays attention to “contradiction” in which certain circumstances or characters are evaluated in a completely opposite manner, presents a special work based on a theme of an independence activist and a patriot martyr, “Ahn Jung-geun.” By intercrossing a portrait of a human figure with two screens painted over with thick paint on the lenticular lens, he intends to express the contradictory situation in which Ahn Jung-geun is inarguably a national hero, but is also defined as a terrorist. In addition, the artist’s painting of war orphans depicted on the vibrant pink and yellowish ruins of the Korean War dates back to 2012. The work carries even more a special meaning as it has the same image as the photo hung in the photo exhibition Room “Korean War” of Odusan Unification Tower.