A giant kinetic sculpture, titled “Someone I Know, in His Garden I’ve Never Seen,” made of wood, motors, lamps and threads, moves with individual yet perfectly rhythmic motions, intriguing viewers and sparking curiosity about the message it seeks to convey.
Artist Yang Jung-uk’s work, to be in public view at the Seoul gallery of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) starting Friday, reflects his memories of the gardens lovingly tended by his wife and father, and the inspiration he drew from their daily labor.
“After watching my wife tend to the garden every day, I began to see her, or rather, traces of her, whenever I passed by there,” the artist said at a press conference at the gallery Thursday, which is set to open an exhibition showcasing the works of the four finalists for the 2024 Korean Artist Prize.
For the work, Yang also drew inspiration from a semi-autobiographical novel he had written, in which a son discovers traces of his late father in the garden during a visit to his childhood home.
With this moving sculpture, the artist sought to capture the essence of those cherished individuals, repurposing the sculpture’s components to imbue them with new meanings beyond their original functions.
Yang is one of the four finalists for the annual prize, which the MMCA has hosted annually since 2012 in collaboration with the SBS Culture Foundation to recognize the most promising and resourceful artist with keen insight into society and art.
Among the four are Kwon Ha-yoon, who experiments with technical media, such as 3-D animation, documentaries and virtual reality, to enable viewers to experience spaces within individual memories, and Yoon Ji-young, who utilizes her sculptural language to craft artworks that unveil the underlying operational structures of sacrifice and faith inherent in society.
Additionally, Jane Jin Kaisen, a Korean adoptee based in Denmark, explores themes of memory, migration, borders and translation through her video works.
Kaisen offered seven video works in her exhibition, “Ieodo (Island Beyond the Sea),” which highlights the Korean female divers known as “haenyeo,” and showcases Jeju’s distinct culture, history, traditions and nature.
Each film is distinct, telling its own story based on the artist’s research and years of collaboration with local communities. According to the artist, the exhibition is curated to “create a dialogue” between the films. The two nature-focused videos are positioned at the center, surrounded by five others that depict performances featuring people from different generations, showcasing symbolic gestures and shamanistic rituals.
Beyond exploring nature, she said she has long been “interested in how stories, myths and rituals are somehow fundamental to how we understand our place in the world and how we organize ourselves.”
Each finalist is awarded 50 million won ($36,226) to support their artwork, and the final winner, who will be announced in February, will get an additional 10 million won.
The exhibition will open Friday and run through March 23. (Yonhap)
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