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Lee Dong-Moon solo exhibition 'the Rivers to us'


○ Exhibition infomation

Dates : Nov. 24-Dec. 11, 2012
Venue : OpenSpace Bae gallery
Artist talk : Nov. 11, 6pm
Open Hours : 11 to 6pm (Closed on Monday)
Phone : +82-51-724-5201
URL : http://www.spacebae.com


○ Introduction

What Do ‘the Rivers’ Say to Us?

Since photography took a place in modern art, it has been endlessly developed to prove its identity, settling its unique field. Emphasizing its property, it has distinguished itself from other existing art genres. It became a medium that allows photographers to even conjure tricks thanks to the development of recent digital technology. When seeing that a biennale for sounding out its potential is held, it seems that its field has been secured firmly. And such properties of photography as the recording of events, the reproduction of objects, images for memory, and tracks of the past are forced to step back into the mists of history.

On the other hand, photography as a magical operation and creative action is neither a new concept nor the property of only photography. Since A. Danto declared the end of art and stated the appearance of contemporary art, the discussion on contemporary art has deviated from a media-centric way of thinking. In other words, these days, what a medium is talking about is an important point in the discussion of contemporary art. So, interestingly, it seems that photographs catching spots where something happens through the frame of the camera stand in the context of contemporary art. That is, on-the-spot photography as the record, memory, reproduction, and trace of an event carries out the role of an effective medium that reveals the object of a story and furthermore it itself becomes a story.

Artist Lee Dong-moon’s series “The River to Us” shows the property of on-the-spot photography. For two years, from 2010 January to 2012 January, he explored the Nakdong River, one of the Four Rivers where refurbishment projects were conducted, taking pictures there. Among the construction sites of Nakdong River, he focused on Hamanbo, Namjigyo, Hapcheonbo, and Dalseongbo. If you look at his photographs, you will realize how the slogan of ‘Construction to Revive the Four Rivers” is unreasonable. In a TV quiz show long ago, an excavator driver introduced himself as a sculptor who carved the Earth. Unlike this excavator, the excavators in the construction sites of the Four Rivers seem like cancer cells that gnawed the Earth. And when you look at the excavators in the construction sites, you will also realize that they are not just imaginary cancer cells to the Earth but literally the destroyers of the Earth. The engineering works that overturn nature destroy natural things far more mercilessly than we imagine. In these sites, ‘the universal thought that nature must be preserved for humans and the continuity of the ecosystem’ is flatly crumbled away in front of ‘the (Western) modern thought that nature is an object that should be conquered for the development of human civilizations. The enormous sizes of the construction sites make witnesses feel anger, sadness, and a sense of helplessness. Lee Dong-moon would also have felt such complex feelings.

His photographs present the original scenes of nature and the vivid scenes dug out by the construction. Since he took pictures while the construction was being conducted, he looked at beautiful nature and shocking destruction at the same time. Since the construction sites thoroughly stopped outsiders from accessing there, he could not help but take pictures on the edge of the sites. The scenes his camera could catch were spots outside of the construction sites and their traces. However, since he felt sad at the screams of nature and could not be satisfied only with capturing the traces of the construction, he contained the appearance of machines in his viewfiner. Wanting to contain beautiful nature and the scenes ruined by humans and machines at the same time, he found his mise-en-scene. Basic compositions such as ruins or nature in the foreground, the construction sites in the middle, and nature in the background were made in this way.

Thus, in his pieces, it is hard to find objects that he closely stared at like looking at something through a microscope. And since he faithfully performed the grammar of photography for the reproduction of the landscape, you can feel familiarity from his pieces. Such familiarity drops the effect in which the viewer focuses on an object, reducing the time of focusing on the story. By making the excavators, which are the physical culprits that destroy nature, placed in the back of the photographs, he tried to solve this problem, but since the excavators themselves could not be the center of the story, the effect of the composition is cut in half. It does not appear easy for him to find a balance between his desire as a citizen to record the problems of the Four River Refurbishment Project and his artistic desire to be settled as a photographer.

However, it is not that we cannot read the stories he tries to deliver through his photographs. His work that reveals the soundless cry of Nakdong River visually leads us to realize the value of nature. We can know how nature is destroyed easily if humans reach out their hands to it. Arrogance that people can renovate nature and selfishness that they will obtain economic profit through it, met the faith that development and modernization will save us, and it brought out ruins. The obsession with economic development that should have already been overcome is still influencing our world. Thus, facing the destruction of the ecosystem that has been ignored during the last century is important. Facing the ruins in the construction of the Four Rivers with a close look is necessary to all of us.

- Kim Jae-hwan Curator of GyeongnamMuseum of Art -