Byen, Ung-Pil
Selfportrait as a man
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| 2009. 4. 7 - 26 |
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Byen, Ung-Pil came to our acknowledgement with his solo exhibition in 2006. After 10 years of study in Germany, he was first introduced with the works all titled , selfportrait is the theme that he continues to pursue until today. All figures in his works always appear without clothes, hair, eye-brow or with distorted faces as much as to the level of anonymity. His times in Germany, started in 1996, made himself question about his own identity. In early years of study, he had various part-time jobs to support himself and drew drawings with simple outlines whenever he had time. A figure in a drawing was neither a man nor a woman, neither an adult nor a child. They were only depicted with very simple outlines in their indifferent, lethargious, and relaxed mood without any tension or passion. Byen, Ung-Pil asks about whom he is, where he is from, and what he is with these drawings of plain lines and excluded details. He maybe wishes to find himself as he distills lots of things. Questions on identities that he started to have while his times in Germany come to the surface by dismissing and empting himself. His definition of identity can be seen in form of the ultimate emptiness after dissolving all characters as possible instead of striving one’s identity. Such continued question on identity appears in Byen’s paintings. These are selfportraits, titled all the same, , which comprehends one’s visage, yet it doesn’t reflect us of yesterday as of today and so doesn’t it of today as of tomorrow since all human beings change accordingly to their own experience as time goes by. Byen takes pictures of himself and transfers the image onto the canvas trying to exclude as many factors, such as hair, eye-brow, mustache, cloth, and etc., as possible to subjectively propose himself without any indication of social stratum. Furthermore, he veils his face behind objects or distorts it to make one’s identity willfully anonymous. At the moment subjects are on the canvas, it is only to be random-figure, not the artist-self. Although all works are , it doesn’t necessary mean selfportrait of Byen or specific someone, but of random-self. His selfportrait is also the process of finding the identity, and it could be of me, you, and of us; the selfportrait of our generation. By Gilles Deleuze, among most known scholars on Post-Structualism, asserts the difference between Simulacre, Idea and Life borrowed from Plato’s theory. Idea is Archetype, Life is reproduction, and Simulacre is a reproduction of the reproduction. The reproduction inquires about Archetype that doesn’t and can’t form itself. As the reproduction changes in accordance with time and experience, there can’t be the perfect reproduction. Yet, Simulacre is not a simple a reproduction of Archetype, allowing its independence and dynamic. Like Deleuze’s theory, Byen not only tryies to capture a new notion of identity and the reproduction towards new space, not a reproduction that duplicates into whole another copy of the reproduction, but also to be free of its first photo-images in his paintings. Through this exhibition, artist questions one of the most reprehensive factors of painting to audience; the originality. Unlike prints or photographs in editions, painting has only one original copy. Gallery HYUNDAI Gangnam Space holds this exhibition in separate two rooms with one space almost quadruples another. Byen painted one photo-image onto two different sized canvases of 90×75(cm) and 180×150(cm), resulting the bigger works quadruples the smaller size, which are displayed according to its size; the bigger in a bigger space and smaller in a smaller room. It brings each-every work in each space under one theme, maintaining its aura as “the original” even in paintings of two editions. Consequently, it makes us reconsider about the originality, the ultimate privilege that only painting possessed for centuries.
GALLERY HYUNDAI |
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