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○ Exhibition Information

Title : Somewhere in moment
Artist : Daeman Yang
Period : 10 – 23 November, 2012
Venue : Gallery GAHOEDONG60

Website : www.gahoedong60.com
Open : Monday to Saturday 12-7pm
Closed on Sundays
Address : 60, Gahoe-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
Email : gahoedong60@gmail.com
Phone : +82-2-3673-0585


○ Exhibition Introduction

Daeman Yang’s “Living Present”

“A street landscape passes by. A moment is captured. Can I call the moment the present? Though the temporal moment that I sensed has already passed away, I am still in the very moment. The sensed landscape comes into my mind, merges with elements in there, and then is perceived again anew within me. A nebulous feeling blurring the real and the surreal.... Where is the landscape I see in the continuum of time—the past, the present and the future?”

In Yang’s works appear familiar cars and street landscapes you can easily see anywhere around you. Common automobiles and street scenes are the subject matter for his work because they are the ones he readily encounters, according to Yang himself. To Yang, nothing is more important than the object right before him. He is accustomed to communicating with objects familiar to himself without knowing himself from when he got used to it. Such conversations with his intimate objects help him to be conscious of his “self.”

When Yang is ‘aware of something,’ it primarily refers to the ‘consciousness of an object.” Consciousness establishes a relationship with the object in the midst of being conscious of it. This consciousness-object relationship is of “intentional relationship” explained by Husserl (Edmund Husserl, 1859 ~ 1938), the founder of Phenomenology. According to Husserl, what makes an object as it is and what makes an act of feeling and desire directed toward the object is representation (or objectification). If consciousness does not perform such representation, it is like that the object is nothing—which does not exist—to the consciousness. Husserl viewed an association process through which a sensed external object combines with a similar representation process and creates a meaning intrinsically as one of intentionalities. What Husserl designed to explore was not natural time but internal time of consciousness—not realistic space but phenomenological space, the space that becomes the “living present” from the present perspective.

Between the object he actually looks at and his “self” who is conscious about it, Yang is doubtful over what is real and when is “now.” On such phenomenological and ontological question, Husserl claimed that sensation and perception should be distinguished by means of the exclusion of objective time in terms of time-consciousness; and that perception is more fundamental in composing time. What is sensed is composed of what is perceived. And it is also phenomenological resources for what is perceived. What is perceived can last because continuity of perception is one of the properties of internal time. Let’s look at Husserl’s account:

“If we look at a piece of chalk and close and open our eyes, we have two perceptions. In this situation, we say that we have seen the same chalk twice. We have two temporally separated contents. We also see, phenomenologically, a temporal apartness, a separation. But there is no separation in terms of the object; it is the same. The object endures; the phenomenon changes.”

When sensation is directly experienced, its impression lingers for a while. Even after it completely vanishes away, the sensation is still perceived because it is the modification of the very sensation. According to Husserl, when sensation is obtained through imagination, it maintains properties of temporal variability, and its content is presented as what is pushed backward and receded per moment. But such act of modification is no longer in the realm of the sensation nor is triggered by stimulus. A stimulus only produces the sensory content of the present.

When the stimulus disappears, its sensation also vanishes away. But the perceived sensation itself becomes creative; that is, the sensation is amply modified by temporal features and internal imaginative representation which is same with or almost similar to the content of the sensation, and it finally generates a new imaginative representation by itself. The newly formed representation, in turn, awakens another representation correlated to its predecessor. Even when the external objects like cars and streets fade away, the internally perceived sensation does not disappear; instead, it is related to other sensations or prior representations and then reveals another imaginative representation. All of these work through modification and keep on through continuation. Under the context of Husserl’s theory, Yang’s work initiated by his direct experiences of external objects sees the given objects as phenomenological substances, analyzes layers of consciousness on mental flow and explores the origin beyond natural experiences.

Yang talks to himself:

“What makes me have interest in such objects? Is it related to what I have experienced so far—everything that I have longed for, searched for or even strived to escape from?

While you are interacting with the world, you come to realize that the more you know of your “self,” the less you depend on anyone else, and the less you claim. What you realize is you are self-conscious about the fact that “I am in a certain state.” Here, the intentionality that the consciousness holds refers to the whole that a concrete empirical self experiences, or the reflective consciousness of internal perception, or the consciousness toward an object. The process where various sensory contents are interpreted and form conscious relationship with self-identical objects was called prehension or apperception by Husserl. Intentionality lies in the foundation of an act of perception and sensation contents and becomes self-unifying constitutively through prehension or apperception.

“As one complete stream of consciousness elapses, it can be recollected and forms a unity in the way it is presented in the memory. Therefore, a stream of consciousness is also definitely organized with unity in its own consciousness.”

The subject in Yang’s works appears as if it drives the car or captures a patch of exterior landscape sensed at a moment. The moment is surely of a phenomenological time and thus can be understood not only as an act of unified apperception by time-object but also as a representation of the object that has already passed by but still occupies a temporal space in an intrinsically conscious way. Thus, a temporal stream consisting of time is not a stream that just flows away and continues to change, but an objectivity represented as “now” after the objectivity is sensed by Yang, modified and then perceived and re-modified from the present perspective. This indicates the unity directed toward the past and transcends “temporal-omnipresence” and continues to pursue something new. In this process, a sight towards an objective object is created and consciousness that always dwells in a continuous stream is formed in unity.

Now, let’s go back to Yang’s question.

“Where is the landscape I see in the continuum of time—the past, the present and the future?”
The remark of phenomenologist K. Held would be appropriate to answer his question.
“’The Living Present’ is the origin of the entire temporality (Zeitlichkeit) prior to the time that can be called “now” as well as the essential phenomenon where self-reflection starts. In this context, as Husserl put, it is not that primal modification of consciousness takes place in the midst of time, but that time is established in the midst of pure-self.”

- By Seonyoung Hwang/ Ph.D in Art Therapy



Artist’s Note in 2012 —-“Living Present” by Daeman Yang

The past might be an illusion. Only this moment could be a genuine reality and what it is all about.
But the very moment I realize has already faded away into the illusion.

Often, there exists a living instant—somewhere no one pays attention to. Something that is least concrete and noticeable is sometimes most existential and realistic.

One day, I gazed away a landscape that have been unnoticed.
Even in the temporal and spatial existence I fail to perceive, there always exists some “thing.”
The ephemeral moment of my life that a “thing” or “being” observes and stares at vanishes away like a mirage.

I am standing in the middle of the time torrent flying like an arrow. I don’t know where is the right place I am supposed to be standing in.

The moment, the present, vagueness, truth and illusion, the real and surreal, existence and non-existence, time………



Daeman Yang

Education
1993 Fine Art, Hongik University, Korea
Present; Lecturer at Sunhwa Arts High School

Exhibition
2012 Somewhere in moment (Gallery GAHOEDONG60)
2012 Seoul Modern Art Show (aT Center)
2012 WOW Vol.2 (Gallery Samjung)
2011 WOW Vol.1 (Gallery Iang)
2010 Yellin-gonggam (Hangaram Art Museum of Seoul Arts Center)
2010 KASF(Korea Art Summer Festival) (SETEC)
1999 Spreading of Consciousness (Seoul Museum of Art)
1997 Ogamdo Vol. 3(Painting of the Five Senses Vol. 3) (Seonam Gallery)
1997 re-figure (Dukwon Gallery)
1996 Ogamdo Vol. 2(Painting of the Five Senses Vol. 2) (Kwanhoon Gallery)
1995 Ogamdo Vol. 1(Painting of the Five Senses Vol. 1) (Gallery Boda)
1994 Spreading of Consciousness (Hangaram Art Museum of Seoul Arts Center)