Title: BYUNG-HUN MIN
2011. 4. 21. (THU) – 5. 20. (FRI)
Opening: 2011. 4. 21. (THU) PM 5
Location: 97-16 Chungdam-Dong, Kangnam-Gu, Seoul, Korea
www.caisgallery.com
T. 511-0668 F. 545-2239
BYUNG-HUN MIN
CAIS Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Korea’s representative photographer Byung-Hun Min, from 21st of April until 20th of May. Byung-Hun Min is one of the few photographers within the country steadily persistent with black and white straight photography in analogue method, showing the work by capturing the hidden beauty of subject in his own perspective through a vague grey tone screen. The exhibition is his first-ever to open the Portrait series to public, along with the landscape photo he had been working on as the extension of Sea and Snow Land series.
Portrait’ series mostly subjected to nude or half nude revives the sensual and mysterious female body figures. Although far from lascivious or provocative, there exists an eclipsed obscurity that rather stimulates an embedded instinctive curiosity of human. The pictorial texture and a misty scene remind of hand smudge on charcoal drawing.
As such expression minimizes the outer characteristic of an actual model in recognizable form the viewer becomes more unconsciously involved into the work by striving to read the distinct feature on the subject.
The ‘Sea’ series capture a secretive moment of a distant winter sea almost extinct within the artist’s peculiar sight of view. The surface of the winter ocean reveals more diverse textures as the wave becomes rough. The flurries of snow, water birds in a flock, and rocks on seashore add a peculiar sense of loneliness to the space.
His ‘Snowing Sea’ can be described as extinctions of snow and simultaneously, return to the ocean soon to rebirth.
‘Snowland’ series started since 2005 carries the beauty of earth covered in snow The snow on mountain ridge reveals the form itself more plainly, as the trees sparsely planted inside the snow seem bold and abstract like a brush stroke on monochrome painting. Standing in front of his work of white snow transcending time and space with rage of sharp wind stroke will awaken both the sensibility and rationality.
Byung-Hun Min first appeared into the photography in 1984 receiving an award of Silver Medal from Dong-A International Photo Salon, having his first solo exhibition at PineHill Gallery, opened up diverse solo exhibitions afterward at Gaain Gallery, Kumho Museum of Art, Hanmi Museum of Photography, CAIS Gallery, as well as other international art galleries such as Baudoin Lebon Gallery in Paris, Peter Fetterman Gallery in Santa Monica, etc. His works are possessed by National Museum of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Centre National des Arts Plastiques in Paris, etc.
At the second half of this year, he will be having a solo exhibition at La Galerie Particuliere in Paris and an invitation exhibition at FFotogallery in Britain.
On Byung Hun Min’s Work _ Landscape and Nude : Methodology of Attention
By Jin Sang Yoo, professor at Kaywon School of Art and Design
The recent landscape scenes by Byung Hun Min compose of dimly described space of blurred winter sea, flurries of snow deep in the valley and at the foot of a mountain. Without exception, the dark grey atmosphere that comes across one’s mind covers the air with a gentle and faint tone. In his photo, the scenes remain rarefied. And such rarefaction alternately describe Byung Hun Min’s photo in three ways. The first is created by a damp light filling up the air, the second, left over space by one’s sight. And the third is by a distance between the eye and the subject. The subject is located at the farthest from the sight. Such distance requires of a peculiarity of a sight towards the subject. All these three elements of rarefaction- light, space, and distance-in reiteration, complete Byung Hun Min’s photo structurally. In another word, his photo is constructed by rarefaction. Why is that? Why should photo become rarefied?
The rarefaction brings short of breath. The surrounding atmosphere becomes tinged with such overlapped rarefaction. The paradox from Byung Hun Min’s photo is as in the following. : The farther we throw our gaze, the stronger our perception becomes in the very front of our vision. Gazing far away holds the breath. It’s necessary to pay attention and hold the breath for a fixed vision without having to miss the subject. There is emptiness. It’s rather difficult to find a specific subject to gaze upon. Only a portion of a scene, just a common part identical with other parts of scene remains. And it ends up as a portion which carries the whole picture. Like a fractal effect, a portion is the repetition of the whole. Instead of surveying the whole, a photographer tenaciously stares at a portion. There exists a minute part observed with a fixed gaze within an empty, rarefied space. Inversely, a distant subject demands an intense attention. More persistent and distinct gaze is needed for a better observation. A little inattention may lose or even bring the target indistinguishable. Therefore a gaze must go on constantly and steadily.
What we are looking at is distant scenery. There are two meanings to ‘being distant.’ One describes a distance as being out of sight, the other, as an extinction of sight because of it. A distant scene being out of touch and fugacious, isn’t always there, but disappears like a mirage. The reason for keeping a distant view is because of not being allowed, being unavailable, or being seen only from a distance. Or all three could be reasons. In order to view a space from afar, one must search the place within a wide visibility, and concentrate on while staring at it. Although such place is only a portion of a wide continuity, it becomes distinguished with all the other differing places by my own sight. The attention pulls apart the portion of a huge space across a widened distance from the other portion. The sight, segmenting the world is to look at the target. It can never become a subject of the attention, unless divided.
The Sea series is capturing the view from the seashore, the rough surface of the ocean beneath the horizon, rocks by the shore hit by waves, and the dim shadows of water birds flying above the beach. There is a sound of wind beating the eardrum and a scene of artist standing remains within the winter landscape, when looking inside the picture. There appears an expanded view of a distant ocean’s secretive surface almost out of sight captured by a telephoto lens, inside the viewfinder he’s looking into. For the record of such transitory fleeting moment of the tiny landscape within the transitory distant place, the artist deeply looks inside the viewfinder within a winter landscape. When looking at the picture, we feel sympathy from all these view of synesthesia. There’s hardly anything described within the photo of Byung Hun Min. There is an absence of the concrete context such as ocean, mountain, trees, and birds. They are definitely not the subject displaying the peculiarity within the artist’s attention. His photo shows no definite scene. If I am to obstinately describe, it’s ‘being distant.’ There’s placed a distant space In between the audience and the subject displayed within the photo. The photo indicates such empty space instead of the subject itself. The artist consciously stares at an empty space, upon the air, trace of time, and particles filling up the space, instead of something definite. The camera records such attention. It’s also this empty distance which the light reveals. The photo automatically records something. Unless it does, it’s when the intention of a photographer remains toward an empty space. For all this, it records something as a ‘machine.’ The ‘machinery’ of the photography is as the following.
There are three layers: 1) Diaphragm, 2) Retina, or photosensitive plane, and 3) clear base of a perspective pyramid. The diaphragm is a square shaped black window placed in the interior of camera, selecting and segmenting time by opening and closing in ultrahigh speed. Retina is where the image is established and becomes united with a photosensitive surface by a reflector. A minute time difference and interval between the retina and photosensitive plane seem ignored within the expression of a photo recording what the eyes see. Nevertheless, we believe that the photo is what the photographer had seen, and photographer knows this difference. Lastly, the clear base of a perspective pyramid is a clear, virtual cut in front of an object by monocular penetration which the camera structurally connotes. This clear layer conforms to an image recorded on retina or photosensitive plane. The photography records this virtual layer. Although these three layers differ from one another, they are located on the identical position by a camera. The marvel carried by camera as promethean equipment which extracts the segment of time, visualization, and discontinuity from a lasting continuity, invisibility, continuum of space inherent within nature, begins with these ‘layers’ in reiteration. Just as how telescope reiterates two lenses and dissipates distance, photo reiterates three layers to conform the world and the attention together. The machinery of photo is a process on such conformity.
There’s no vivid subject captured within
series as the previous series had. There’s hardly any inevitable continuity for the other to surrounding elements such as cliff, forest, snow covered filed, a tree, a road with a telephone pole standing. The only common thing they share is the existence of the flurries of snow and the bearing of it. The snow only provides a bright grey tone on the overall page of the photo until the whole becomes blurred. The snow substitutes the light. Snow covered world is also the world that minimizes the photo. The trees and the soil on the hillside faintly covering the picture remind of lightly scratched scars. Everywhere in snow land only reveals the shadows in even distance. Therefore, there is no difference to wherever the camera turns to. It only gazes upon somewhere. Despite of the machinery of the camera, there’s something else inherent to its attention. This becomes related to questions such as where the attention arises from, or what leads to this attention, etc. What other word could replace a cliché, the desire of attention?
The series mainly compose of female figure, either half clothed or nude body photos. These photos portray a specific target of desire contrary to other photos of Byung Hun Min. The subjected body of female is portrayed as vague shadows like charcoal drawing that seems to dimly spread on relatively clear parts. Barth had seen the essence of photo in the ‘pose.’ (“I look again the immobility of the photo taken in the past. The pose is formed by this state of repose.”) He points out that the photo begins with ‘art de la Personne: The art of human’ of all things. The portrait shows two contrasting subjects. Although it points out to the subject as a target of once ‘existed(ça-a-été)’ that is the consciously chosen subject of human in state of ‘noème,’ it also presents the subject ‘living(vivante)’ revived in the present at the same time. That is the living image of the dead. As such paradox, being irreversible, makes the photo distinct from the movie. And the ‘pose’ points out to the fact that there will be no other different image continuing on afterward.
There is a little significance to the distance between the ‘existed’ and the ‘living.’ Whether in between a few second or within a century, photo vividly revives and proves the once existed now and here all at once.
Because of such horrifying duplicity (the corpse-vividness), the attention loses its being in front of photo. The ‘pose’ becomes distant by another distance (semitransparent screen) within Byung Hun Min’s photo. The discord of body created by such duplicity leads to the extinction of attention according to ‘being distant.’
If the desire of attention toward subject is what creates the duplicity of photo, the extinction of attention or diluteness makes the duplicity itself disappear. It no longer is a ‘vivid’ subject. The subject either fades away or becomes farther away. The fact of its existed state along with its appearance in the present is also becoming vague. The surface of the photo and the trace of a recorded attention are the only remaining.
There is no empty space recorded within series just as other landscape photos do. The female figures as subject are not only beautiful, but also erotic. No matter how distant it becomes or dimly described, the remaining minimum contour itself intensely evokes the desire of attention. This is the difference between the landscape photo and the portrait. However, the subject is the attention, not desire. In between the landscape and nude, the theme of this exhibition is the state of attention revealed by Byung Hun Min. Because the most essential meaning produced by photo is the attention as the subject exposed to an empty space.
