전국광, 모더니스트

Chun Kook-kwang, a Modernist

Sunghui Lee

Le repos incomplet: the Time of a Lying Sculptor

About five years ago, I first came to learn about Chun Kook-kwang’s work by means of a few photographs by photographer Chun Eun. Her visit to a sculptor in his sickbed (who was a colleague of Kook-kwang) triggered her curiosity about another sculptor (Kook-kwang), who was by then long gone. Then, I was not able to distinguish either the lying sculptor from the gone or whether the work depicted was a gypsum model or completed stonework. I couldn’t even tell whether the picture of a thorn amongst other pictures of sculpture was real or not. That ignorance of mine was probably parallel to my ignorance of the genre of sculpture. This exhibition started from the ignorance of that time; therefore, from Eun’s series Le repos incomplet (2016), I would say. From people close to her, Eun used to hear that she “took after the sculptor’s hands.” Long after the sculptor’s death, as she was observing gypsum models that filled up the shelves in his old studio, she decided to photograph them. Capturing those masses in different shapes, she delved into the surface of his sculpture specifically. She pondered, “The sculptor’s fingertips must have touched on the surface of mass. Its surface hints at the inner mass. Then, what does the inner mass hint on? If I bring my fingertips to his, could the indication of inner mass be revealed?”^[1] As an attempt to answer the question, Eun photographed Kook-kwang’s sculptures. I received those in the form of image data browsable on a tablet in the first place. Eun’s photography caressed the surface of his sculpture by means of the light traversing her camera, trying to imagine the sculptor’s fingertips touching sculptures. As for me, when I zoomed in and out the pictures on the tablet screen, I could unexpectedly touch the surface of the sculpture, scintillating below the liquid crystal panel.

It was only last winter when I could finally encounter Kook-kwang’s sculpture face to face, which I had first seen as images. The real perception undoubtedly differed from the pictures. Not only due to the difference of scale between the picture and the work but also the sight of inevitable traces of time accumulated on the models and works, densely occupying the studio shelves. This discrepancy of time could be narrowed down through repeated visits that eventually accustomed my view of them. As my perception became more focused, I could actually sense the palpability of their surface as captured in Eun’s photography. This led me to imaginations of the work of the sculptor’s hand that must have manifested on the surface of sculpture. Eun once spoke in an interview about impressions she got when she visited the Musée Rodin in Paris. Still a sculpture student back then, looking at the unfinished works by Rodin and how “the figures bulged out abruptly from the masses of stone,” Eun realized that “the task of a sculptor is not to carve out any figure but to discover it hiding inside the masses of soil, wood and stone.”^[2] Michelangelo should have said something similar, that the task of the sculptor is to discover a figure from a block of stone. Here, I believe the figure must indicate something that ought to dwell in that ‘inside.’

[1] Chun Eun, Le repos incomplet, Float 6 (Seoul: Hezuk Press, 2017), 14.

[2] Chun Eun, Heeseung Chung, “Chun Eun–Heeseung Chung: A Conversation,” I Love You, I Love You Not (Seoul: HITE Foundation, 2017), 254.

Mass, Amass/Enemy

Likewise, Kook-kwang seems to have considered the figure of a sculpture dwelling within the mass. As a university student, he founded Group Esprit (1972) with his fellow students. After graduation, he launched his career winning various prizes and produced large and small sculptures as well as numerous drawings until his death in an accident in 1990.^[3] He also left plenty of writings about his attitude and aspiration toward his work. He wrote that his work is “based on the volume of the mass itself, rather than the image of a figure; it is induced by the process of material modification, how a standardized material transits to something else under certain conditions.” His Amass series reflects this idea, where he plays with the Korean word of jeok, indicating both “accumulation” and “enemy.” He wrote, “The most distressing enemy of mine is myself, and his enemy is ‘the mass’ (…) I will always clash and struggle with it.”^[4] On the other hand, while he was not completely denying the attributes endorsed to him such as “the layering artist” or “the one who contemplates on the accumulation,” he still felt uneasy about the fact an artist and his work could get rendered into simple labels. He only yearned for “a bare discovery with no deception” and therefore, sought for a truthful expression. He even asserted, to achieve the chance of touching the reality not as a visual feature but its existential essence, he would be equally fascinated by expressions of dispersion instead of accumulation and would shamelessly confront the critics that might accuse him to be the ‘dismantler,’ who “accumulates, then to demolish it.”^[5] In other words, clashing with the mass, he aimed to reach the figure’s essence instead of its appearance.

In his awareness as a sculptor as well, he didn’t consider himself as the creator of figures motivated by arbitrary inspirations. In an article he wrote for an art magazine, he candidly confessed that he “undertook his artistic work through repeated moments of filtering slow recognitions, rather than being triggered by ephemeral and random stimulation.” He also said not to be an example of artistic development and sublimation prompted by inspirations but just didn’t neglect his work, which led him to gradually growing confidence or even pride at times. Moreover, he described that the inner impetus for his work was activated by neither consciousness nor the act that lies beyond his own capacity. If ever, his artistic response toward the realization of an object, deriving from slowly growing motivation, was related to himself as a natural person rather than his educational background. He summarized, be it confronting a small object or a large event, he absorbed natural objects not through logical thinking but affective projection; starting from there, it would mature as an artistic product.^[6] At the same time, he also left many notes about the duties of an artist, often revealing his resolution and belief in continuous struggles for confidence. To achieve such artistic practice, he strived and reflected again and again. Reading his schedules marked on the calendar, etc. we can see how committed and ceaseless he worked. In the writings he left, he pushed and engaged himself, while delving into possible new directions for his work.

Conceiving Chun Kook-kwang, a Modernist, I was planning to highlight his late work to differentiate this exhibition from previous ones where his work was presented. As an attempt, I was willing to detect the changes in his work after Inner Mass – 0.419㎥ of Matter, his solo exhibition held at Maronie Gallery, Kyoto, Japan in 1986. It was because he presented a quasi-installative exhibition at the gallery instead of object-centered display on pedestal, under the condition of giving various material of wood, soil, terracotta, fabric and twine the same volume––with the aim to expose the differing aspect and structure as per each material. At that time, the artist outlined his oeuvre to have started since early 1980 from becoming aware of ‘meta-mass’ as a method of interpreting the mass. At the same time, he studied the illusion suggested by the mass, the painterly innate to sculpture for example. His works were “created from the interest in the fictive duality of volume and voluminous proportions, the mass and the massive, etc.”^[7] However, he continued, “currently, anticipation of how my further interest in mass might shift is still foggy. I open this exhibition purely to pour out my desire for the form, departing from my own propositions on inner mass.”^[8] What conflicts were concerning him? Indeed, his sculpture was rather abstract than figurative from the beginning and employed repetition and accumulation as its formalistic character. Yet critics did not commonly analyze him in connection to the western Minimalism: its characteristics such as the sterile aesthetic of industrial material, literality of works, handling of object as object and specificity of object (à la Donald Judd) were far from Kook-kwang’s practice; on the other hand, he could have been seen as a constructivist of forms, yet he was also distant from Russian avant-garde. Instead, it was plausible to analyze Chun’s sculpture to have developed under the influence of Korean art in the 1970s, as organic constructions emerging from geometric figures, a form complementary to his forerunning colleagues’ works.^[9] About his experimentation with an expanded range of material and semi-installative space, the critical analysis concluded, “Chun seemed to suggest his own solution by shifting the self-enclosed work to installation through activating the space.”^[10]

It is widely known that Chun had perfectly mastered materiality of matters and technique of handling them even before his admission to the university and regular sculpture education, on sites of sculpture production in monumental scales guided by professional sculptors. Apparently due to the deeply learned skills, some evaluated his sculptural experiments to be still anchored to conventional sculptural habits. Taeman Choi, who summed up the history of Korean modern sculpture, called Chun a “modern classicist” who adhered to sculptural traditions rather than an avant-garde who destroyed it.^[11] However, while I agree he was true to fundamentals of sculptural practice, I cannot ignore the deviation of his work toward dissociation and fragmentation starting to manifest around the time of his solo exhibition at Maronie Gallery.

[3] Kook-kwang graduated from the Sculpture Department at Hongik University in 1974, applied to the 2^nd GongKan Art Contest with Amass–Mutation Ⅰ (1977) and won the Excellence Award in the sculpture section. Later in 1979, he held his first solo exhibition at Arko Art Center.

[4] Quote from Chun Kook-kwang’s notes.

[5] Refers to Chun Kook-kwang’s notes on Mass and Meta Mass.

[6] Chun, Kook-kwang, “On the Verge of Daily Life and Art,” Misulsegye, January 1986, 173.

[7] Chun, Kook-kwang, work description, Inner Mass: an Object of 0.419 ㎥, Chun’s fourth solo exhibition (October 1986). 

[8] Ibid.

[9] Taeman Choi “From Amass to Inner Mass” Mass Mass Mass (Seoul: Siwalbook, 2006), 85-88.

[10] Ibid., 89.

[11] Taeman Choi, History of Korean Modern Sculpture (Paju: Artbooks, 2007), 400.

Freedom – I, You and ‘I’s

“Death has not required us to keep a day free.”^[12]

This line is from Proust by Samuel Beckett, quoted in the introduction of Edward W. Said’s On Late Style.^[13] At the beginning of curatorial discussions on Chun Kook-kwang, a Modernist exhibition, Eun and I took On Late Style as our lead. Considering Kook-kwang’s late work only as an extension of previous work didn’t seem to be sufficient to our eyes. Furthermore, we wished to satiate our curiosity as practitioners of art about ‘lateness,’ a theme with which Said was much occupied. Said investigated the lateness in cases of philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, writers Thomas Mann and Jean Genet, and composer Richard Strauss. He asserted that the lateness of an artist is revealed through the uniqueness of style and investigated the subject over a long period. From Adorno’s analysis of Beethoven, he infers, “Late style is in but oddly apart from, the present” and “only certain artists and thinkers care enough about their métier to believe that it too ages and must face death with failing senses and memory.”^[14]  On composer Benjamin Britton who transferred Thomas Mann’s novel The Death in Venice into an opera, he wrote, “[Britton] does not bring about their harmonious synthesis. As the power of dissociation, he tears them apart in time.”^[15] Said claims not to be interested in the stylistic harmony and resolution naturally gained toward the end of life in chronological order but in dissociation, fragmentation, unsolved contradiction and catastrophe. However, the objects of his analyses are artists who lived long enough to flourish in stylistic achievements and modifications. In contrast, Kook-kwang died abruptly in the midst of undeniably prime years of his career of about mere twenty years. Still, as a sculptor, he was a real example of those whom “Death has not required to keep a day free.” Whereas he focused on inner mass until the mid-1980s, toward the end of the decade, he started to address his notions of dissociation, fragmentation and self-contradiction in a bolder way. In a note from September 1987, his yearning for liberation instead of oppression of the self is apparent: “I often face my disillusion, facing works that are simply released, lacking self-definition. I am faced with a costume; a peel over my inserted, struck and polished self. That costume covers and makes myself invisible. The most deficient aspect is the complete absence of my free-willing self. Reserved expression, tightly staged––I desire to destroy this more than anything. Neither sleek nor highly designed, but something that is rather loose and clumsy; that would be the true next level.”^[16] And in February 1989, he left the following note: “Propose a new moment of illusion. Maximize the visual volume––hanging, floating in the void, in subtle movement. Expand limited space––the three-dimensional on the wall will create a visual space; within this space, I will place my sculpture. The meta-massive––spatialization of the absence; the massive with no volume.”

At this point, as we can no longer hear his explanation or statement about late work, we can only assume his voice from his work solely. The exhibited works are selected from the collection of his family, ranging from formative to late years, with the aim to present the entire development of his artistic practice. For this, work in aluminum Inner Mass (1980) was restored for the first time, while Freedom: Pagoda of One Hundred and Eight Wishes (1989) or Freedom: I, You and ‘I’s (1989) mark one of the very last works he made. Inner Mass (1986), a hanging mobile assembling sharply cut acrylic panels or Inner Mass: Sea Surface (1985) in vinyl tape layers animate our imagination of “illusions” he was about to experiment with. Magnetic Force: 0.027㎥ Space (1986) is the first reenactment of the installation method he had realized after different attempts. Its shape might differ from his documentation pictures, yet we wished it to become an expression of power that supports the spatial edges of two walls. Perhaps we wouldn’t even need to project Said’s keyword of “lateness” to his late work, because he stands still in the beauty of the moment of certain dissociation, fragmentation and change; and our exhibition has only just resumed from that point.

[12] Samuel Beckett, Proust (London: Calder, 1965), 17.

[13] Because of Edward W. Said’s sudden death before finalizing the writing of On Late Style, his family and colleagues published the book posthumously. The editor in charge, Michael Wood, wrote the introduction, who also quoted Samuel Beckett’s Proust.

[14] Edward W. Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008), 24.

[15 Ibid., 160.

[16] Chun Kook-kwang, Mass Mass Mass, (Seoul: Siwalbook, 2006), 279.

Chun Kook-kwang, a Modernist
2022. 3. 12 ~ 4. 8

Artist: Chun Kook-kwang
Curated by : Sunghui Lee (WESS, HITE Collection  Curator)
Support: Eun Chun
Graphic design: Studio Cymbal
Art restoration: Junho Jang
Art works: Sculpture, drawings; 22 pieces and memos, photos etc from 1970-1980 by Chun Kook-kwang