Nice Red Hat for Nobody : Egene Koo




Nice Red Hat for Nobody1, Oil on Canvas, 91X72.7cm, 2009



Being Alone1, Oil on Canvas, 116.7X91cm, 2011

A current trend in contemporary art is the desire to represent the past in the present. Art theorist, Craig Owens has defined this trend with the conceptual term “allegorical impulse.” The archetypal materials used in the past are brought to the allegorical structure of this present time. The past and the present come together in the process of structuring a story. An artist may reinterpret the story in his/her own view and the new story may represent other stories and overlap with them.



Island of Flightless Birds1, Oil on Canvas, 91X72.7cm, 2011

Although the allegorical images are barely considered as invented or newly created, they could be termed “adopted.” Thus, artists who apply this allegory to their work could not only refer the common rule in the culture but also take on a role as an interpreter who can translate the hidden cultural meanings. Moreover, images do not normally indicate direct meanings but can be read as symbolic codes. This is why details of an image - regarded as pictographs - trigger a complicated labyrinth of semiotic meanings, and they desire to sort out the puzzle.    
- Ode to Strawberry Fields by Ho Kyung Chung (art theorist/historian)

Egene Koo

In between hotel : Doho Suh, Eulho Suh, KIA Motors




‘In-Between Hotel’ reinvents unnoticed small spaces

‘Travelers will look for historic landmarks…Some travelers, like me, find joy in exploring in-between spaces and times.’ There are two kinds of tours, says renowned installation artist Do Ho Suh.



One we immediately associate with sightseeing; it moves from one famous attraction to the next. The other, less common, explores the areas in between landmarks. For travelers who prefer the latter, the 50-year-old Korean artist - based in New York, London and Seoul - offers the “In-Between Hotel,” part of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale that starts tomorrow.



“In-Between Hotel” is a tiny hotel room inside a truck. It will appear in between houses and shops, here and there throughout Gwangju.

The interior is not markedly different from ordinary hotel rooms, with a bed, TV, toilet and minibar. But on the outside, it is a truck covered with patterns of brick and slate “to quietly merge into the neighborhood of Gwangju citizens,” Suh explained.
Exterior:Perforated Annodyzed Aluminum Panel on 1.5Ton Truck,
Interior: Birch Plywood, Stainless Steel, Carpet, Glass, Stone
3,700x2,300x3,400cm

In between hotel

Hügel : Kwan young Jung


Einöde 2009 Ink and Acrylic on Canvas 250x160cm

Headlong Flow of Lines

Kwanyoung Jung’s pictures are a silent and forceful means of penetrating and knowing the world.

Kwanyoung Jung, a friendly, cheerful researcher of the unknown who comes from South Korea and lives in Berlin, is animated by the urge to communicate and by absolute determination. He belongs entirely to himself. He is a specialist of the line. He most likes to work on primed canvas, sometimes on paper. He uses 2-4 mm broad brushes, Korean ink, and acrylic paints.

Kwanyoung Jung’s decelerated gaze finds its place within hurtling modernity in his own labyrinths of lines, which tell how life can look in the expectation of intrusion into its structures. Stringently and as if it could be no other way, they penetrate the strata of time, softly elapsing, floral, in complex order and the greatest possible simplicity. Despite all the abstraction of the results, Kwanyoung Jung follows a representational way of thinking. The titles of his works also bear witness to this; they carry on a dialog with what is real as what is seen. The only question is where the artist is at a particular moment – in the micro- or the macro-perspective.



Hügel 2009 Ink and Acrylic on Canvas 260x150cm detail



Hügel 2009 Ink and Acrylic on Canvas 260x150cm

Kwanyoung Jung, who studied in Halle, paints and draws details of the world, thereby creating moods. Nuances of hue, responsible for what is idyllic and anti-idyllic and tied to the earth, reeds, or stone, stimulate the tightrope walk between accessibility and inaccessibility. In any case, they dismember the coziness in which the German bourgeoisie has set up house in the period after the fall of Communism.

When Kwanyoung Jung works on his pictures, it is a strict, quiet, monological procedure. The artist turns to himself. A quite tone of communicativeness does not begin to sound until these pictures are brought among people, but also only if someone indeed desires entry to these labyrinths. Sometimes one has the impression that Kwanyoung Jung is the visionary monk by the sea, that enigmatic man in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting (1810) who stands in a salient position on a deserted beach. He turns his back to us and looks out into the depths of the universe. If he were to see something we don’t see, he would communicate it to us only in a whisper.

Christoph Tannert (Business Manager of Künstlerhaus Bethanien)

Kwan young Jung

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