Burning Eros, and Sculpture’s Cross-over Mediality 

By Yi, Sang-jun, Sculptor 

Jihyun Park has previously presented a series of work forming images with the aggregation of burned incense holes on rice paper, or creating a mass by arranging slim incense sticks in a row, alluding to incidents such as the September 11th terrorist attacks. New works on display at the show were accomplished through a progress of his established techniques. For these works Park burns the brush lines after drawing with ink and then reassembles the detached paper pieces on a canvas. Through this process the artist has clarified the connotations of the work he has done so far, and a few layers of each working process are divided through diverse mediums. What’s obvious here is mutations appearing in this process are not independent but several major aspects of sculpture derived from one incident (work). 

Park’s completed works are mainly displayed on the wall like paintings and photographs, unlike sculpture involving three-dimensional space. With this, those viewing his works consider discovering any sculptural hallmarks in his work of no significance even though his works started from sculpture. In fact, anyone today can easily transcend the scope of art without being caught by some old-fashioned standards such as form and physical properties. Probably due to my disposition as a sculptor however, I cannot avoid taking notice of something sculptural in Park’s work and enjoy talking about such sculptural elements in his work. I feel we need to seriously consider his work’s sculptural quality since the artist has recently shown his intention to embrace diverse mediums. Accordingly, I think this discussion is not only necessary now but also comes up naturally at this point in time. 

What is considered pictorial or often misunderstood in Park’s work derives from its planar form. As is already widely known, the plane quality has been a key issue in contemporary painting. However, the problem we meet in judging its formative features is the role of the canvas as a medium is extremely passive, and often concealed. The canvas with a planar quality is in retreat as an ancillary means to push form (paint) to the outside of its surface, that is, a simple supporter. On the contrary, using rice paper as the underlying medium of Oriental painting and calligraphy presupposes space differently from the Western canvas. Its characteristics are emphasized by its background, qualitative difference of blank space, and its permeability. This feature is also discovered in Park’s work. In Park’s work water and ink is not to bring about a visual illusion of pushing out from the plane, but is set in space, when the material (paper) absorbs the pigment. It is undeniable that his form appears quite strong, but the form seem to be important in that it is a departure point of his design to demarcate a vast land with an amorphous medium. After the ink completes its arrangement it is immediately burned from its location. Space created with this is not ‘Thanatos space’ that appears by encroaching on the medium’s physical structure but ‘massive space’ that is renewed through its extinction. Such space seems transferred from a physical state to an abstract form, but paradoxically presents sculptural substantiality, challenging stereotyped perspectives that the East is quite spiritual while the West is quite material. 

As mentioned above, in his early work Park makes holes by burning rice paper. Although the holes, which seem like dots, reveal their locations in the state of material (paper) being removed, they paradoxically relate their existence to matter, their external condition. Each pinhole appears as an indexical mark in the composition free from any independent rule. In this respect, we can consider Rudolf Arnheim’s psychological analysis of ‘holes’ in a sculptural work and his description of sculpture’s function of space. Regrettably however, such analysis is insufficient for animated sculptural space, as it was presented anchored to completed form. For instance, Arnheim divides Henry Moore’s sculptural space into limited space (l’espace-limite) and surrounding space (l’espace-milieu).1) Holes here question recalling surrounding space in conventional sculptural space as a condensed form, lending the right as equal to the inner space of the sculpture itself and to the space surrounding the sculptural work. However, the holes are only distinguishing the sculptural work quantitatively rather than opening its meaning because such space divided into two makes viewers realize balance and equilibrium in symmetry, making the borderline of sculptural composition clear and a divided relation conspicuous. 

Park’s other series Lap Time is photographic work capturing flames burning on ink marks on rice paper using long exposure. The hypnotic light image measures the time when the flame is ignited to the time it is extinguished, and its title refers to the time required. This represents the real physical time in a unit, but the artist here hints at the absoluteness of transmigration contrasted with linear temporality. Extinction and renewal simultaneously occurs, and the burning flame itself, the dynamic force underpinning this directly influences the meaning of the medium when it continues. According to the artist however, a representational form expressing its vitality with a strong engine is also not ancillary to such change but actively involved in this. If what she says is right, the form along with some image is the force making the medium’s function go in the complete opposite direction and an explosive power crossing each part. 

A sculptural situation turns rapidly into a physical field in the last process of mounting. After the flame dies out, the material or the medium remains as fragments cut by the fire. The process of again gathering the pieces, attaching them to a canvas, and finally shrouding them enters a more profound situation. That is to say, a more profound phase is the process of restoring these pieces by mounting them. This process is akin to recovering archeological material. While the archeological process demands a historical analysis of ‘vanished beings’, Park’s achieves ‘perfect reclamation’ through a process of resurrection. 

Once all situations are completed, it is at last possible to view his sculpture’s actual movement and anatomical aspects. What Park has consistently conceived and deconstructed in his work process and what she cut in flaming dust in a gas mask are none other than bone and flesh, and ghostlike shadows. What at last emerges before our eyes by doing this are the biological bodies of sculpture. 

For the sculptors who want to establish new perspectives toward sculptural practice in the world where suspicious images based on vision and information are pervasive, concerns for sculptural situations and conditions have to be reestablished. These are associated with extending the scope of sculpture, not giving up their awareness of the medium’s category. Park has said that she is more interested in situations in which a force faces another force, or feeling a highly charged state when she go from one space to another, adding that she intends to place his work in a place where such forces unfold. His description indicates she began finding sculptural solutions for the two extremes in the real world isolated in a state dividing form and image, reality and imagination. In other words, what we truly need to note is not what medium sculpture defines but how the sculptural is revived through diverse mediums.