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Modern Times 1.
Modern Times 2.
Modern Times 3. gloomy rhythms
Modern Times 4. jingle jingle
Dot + Dots.
Sadism.
A hole.
A better place to kiss you.
Photoraphic Look 1. a construction
Leaks |
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This is the second work of the Photographic look series. This is the outcome of last year 2017, following the first work in 2016. This Photographic look series is about ?looking photographically¡® or the outcome of looking and will consist of things that only photography can achieve. In the first work, I dealt with the visual composition and editing within the rectangular frame. Now, it is about time.
1. About photography and time Today, the fact that a photograph fragments time is no surprise at all. Everyone knows that and possesses a photograph that way. Numerous photographs on social media, such as newspapers, magazines, the Internet, Facebook, and Instagram are as omnipresent as air or water. It has been a long time so we have forgotten the presence of a photograph and its temporality. With regards to time, no art is as peculiar as photography. Most artworks occupy time or are occupied by time. Being able to fragment time is a character unique to photography. There is no such thing as music, painting, film, sculpture, and literature in 1/125 sec. Photography captures a moment and, at the same time, pursues eternity. Ironically, a photograph which contains time is preserved while resisting and enduring time. A very pleasant fact nevertheless, vision and eternity fall into the realm of temporality which we can never be able to experience. Having both of them alone makes photography more distinguished. Speaking of temporality only, the task of photography is to pursue eternity. When there is no time, there is no vision. Needless to say, it is impossible to just pass fragmented time/vision in the Photographic look series. This work was thought and exercised in ways that are fresh anew in order to commemorate that temporality. Photography swallows up every facet of things that can exist in space. From a static thing rich in quantity to the subtle trembling of delicate things, both the light and shadow that completely fill around them¡¦ the physical and organic dependent relationship arising between objects and the space functioning as the background are thoroughly contained. Hence, photography fundamentally remains as ?evidence and a trace from their view.¡®
2. About film and print a.A form changes based on what contents demand. Contents change based on what a form demands. Borrowing words from Jacques Derrida, the relationship between ergon/contents and parergon/form interferes and defines one another. Much of dichotomized concepts are in fact intertwined. The ideas of classic and romance, material and form, common and uncommon, essence and phenomenon all resemble the relationship between ergon and paragon.
Speaking of form only, it becomes a frame that confines contents and simultaneously a precise machine that refines contents. Hence, the elements of form that an artist takes upon their work will consequently have a certain relation to its contents. After all, a form ultimately becomes a matter of an artist¡®s attitude. Speaking of photography, for example, whether to have a digital process or an analog process depends upon an artist¡®s attitude and will create different relations according to each content. b. When it comes to the subject of love, we are inclined to approach, touch, rub, and hug it. It is a natural expression of love and care. Love is completed in an analogue way like that, so is photography. Film, print, and gelatin silver print, in other words the analogue process, is a collaboration with the ability of a machine. It is a collaboration between the ability of a machine and the creativity of humans. It is restless variations between the ability of a machine and of humans. There needs to be constant physical and emotional friction with a machine and they need to be accustomed to each other. This love with a machine sharply touches every corner of the five senses and is transferred into a new sensation that has never existed before. They become more and more complete while becoming entangled and disentangled repeatedly. Let¡®s say those emotions are pleasure on the whole. Such term seems most relevant here. For photography in this era, the analogue process is for sensual pleasure, a fun toy for machine lovers. Quantitatively as well as qualitatively, the analogue process has different facets of sensation than the digital processing. I will not make value judgements about it. As I already mentioned before, I am a lover of pleasure. Therefore, I am a modernist. In regard to producing work, I am parasitic on the differences and repetition of things outside of me and those of others; I am an artist who is just too selfish to borrow the modern aesthetic which relies on an accident and involuntariness.
3. Shortly, about tragedy. A photograph does not look at us. It cannot speak to us nor can it hear. There is no such thing as time and narratives. Some even say there is nothing. Is there any art that is as dull and dumb as photography? Because photography cannot speak and hear, people tend to belittle photography. Some say it is real and some others say it is not and some and some... just confusing is the language. Photography is, perhaps, doomed to this tragedy. I conjecture, when human-produced things start talking to humans, even independently thinking and behaving—when we eventually complete self-reproduction—art might meet its end, as if God who created humans resembling himself stopped creating them. By then, the doomed tragedy of art will end. It was Antonio Gramsci. ¡ªThe old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear (La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere).?
Artist statement. |
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