<Writing in Exhibition I>
 
1. Writing in Exhibition
There are words or concepts often used in art critical writings. Words that make pairs are frequently used, but these words are not only cliche but are just a different way of expressing something insignificant. Particular repetitive verbs are used ambiguously without much relevance to the clear definition of the word.
Ahn So-hyung proposed three of her own writings. One is Paradoxical Space that Shakes Inertia, a writing on artist and art work centering on Minae Kim’s solo exhibition Black, Pink Balls. While detailed description of the work is not always necessary, critical writings that skip the stage of explaining the visible work and jump right into the analysis of meaning are difficult to read and lack persuasive power. The second text Ahn presented was Breathless, Tireless Refrain: Beyond the Dichotomy of Pure Art and Participatory Art, which was an essay in the catalogue for the exhibition Tireless Refrain held at Nam June Paik Art Center. The exhibition featured works that demonstrate the political characteristics of art in the most artistic way without focusing on a particular event or subject. This text for the exhibition was composed first, and then art works complementing the text were put together in an exhibition form. This process is a privilege for special exhibitions, and DOOSAN Curator Workshop’s participants also see the importance of throwing a powerful message as to declare a particular subject. The text focuses on the overall intention of the exhibition rather than explaining the art works themselves, and so the text includes many references. The third text was a writing on an artist titled Documentation by Someone without the Antibody to Loss: Boyun Jang’s Photography and Text. Writings on artist deal with the overall art world in a more comprehensive manner than writings on art, and must not be a means to compliment the artist.
 
2. Examples of Works by Gyungsu An, Jungju An, and Soo Sung Lee
The participants viewed art works by three artists, then described and analyzed the works and their formality.
 
1) Gyungsu An, Blind Spot, 2014
This work depicts a space where a barricade has been placed over an area coated with cement in order to keep people from walking over it. Drawn from a bird’s eye view in the air, the perspective is not from very high up. The wire is smeared to a side, as if to convey a fleeting moment.
2) Jungju An, Their war 1 - Ethiopia
Round 1 shows the whole shot of people focusing on the game itself, then takes a close-up on the person playing the game, then the actual game itself. This part functions as an accentuating juxtaposition with the music round in the back. Sound is heard before the image on the screen in the music round, and rhythm is extracted through the prepetition and editing of a particular gesture. The footage, taken by the artist, is used as a musical note for composition. Ahn has persistently carried out his formal experimentation focusing on the relationship between video and sound.
3) Soo Sung Lee, Bachelor Party, 2014
Lee works with given conditions. While many interpretations are possible in one work, the three participants of the seminar read the work in different ways: Sungah Serena Choo focused on the material property of two contradictory traits of drying machine and actual water, while Sue Kim didn’t produce anything herself but pointed at a certain object produced by the machine, and Jeongyoon Choi read water as a residue that’s produced irrelevant to the specific purpose of the machine. Therefore, as an art work can be interpreted and understood in different ways, it’s more meaningful when it’s described the way it is presented, preceded by the efforts to figure out the intention of the artist.
 
Roland Barthes was proficient in analyzing the image through sufficient explanation of the work. Among his analysis, the essays on Encyclopœdia Universalis, criticism on Cy Twombly, and Eisenstein’s film The Battleship Potemkin are particularly of importance and significance. A criticism is endowed with significance when a message can be read with persuasive power, based on detailed portrayal.