The temporary landing and taking off to 'the Difference'

Interpreting Jin Shiu's artworks gives me enjoyment of cord-breaking, such as decoding a strange topographical map which has a certain structure of chaos and fractal. As it's not easy, the process is more enjoyable to experience the enlightened moment like blowing fresh wind somewhere in my brain. After Arthur Danto declared 'The End of Art', the other side of Art got out of heavy corporeality and flied to philosophy and concept. In the ranks of critical flight, his art also reveals its value.
'Unidentified Fine-art Object', the extraordinary title of his solo show provides one of clues; he deals with Fine Art itself as a subject. Therefore, we get to simply expect a kind of Meta-attribute in his show, that is, Art about Art. Before this guesswork, however, we should remember he has the eyes of dragonfly. The eyes of dragonfly, which stays in the air by the flaps of wings in incredible speed, has the compound structure: ommateum, facet and thousands of stemmata. His drawing entitled Reconnaissance Plane shows a image of dragonfly with emphasized eyes drawn by pencil softly. And it's just the metamorphosis of his eye, and implies that the actual states of world which he reflects can not be interpreted only by rationality.
The eyes of dragonfly. It is worth enough to compare the labyrinth of forking times of Borges, Intra's net in Buddhism-cited for teaching theory of the causation by the universal principle-or the body without organs of Deleuze. Although it is the statement of expanded speculation, however, nothing is as boring as it is repeated like an absolute proposition in artwork. So, what is fortunate above all is that Jin Shiu's artistic fantasy works so fluently in the close tightrope walking between the expansion of thinking and aesthetic objects.
 

As we can see in Temporary Landing, the relations he have had with external world is very arbitrary. Besides, his autobiographical artworks such as Concept, Self-reference seems to show that even his relationship to himself is also arbitrary. In fact, people who know his trauma-he had been adopted and the hard time ended cruelly without any consolation to him-are eager to connect the intimations in his artworks and his tenacious working process like penetrating or stitching paper by pointed, small needle, to his personal narratives. It is sure that the personal background of artists sometimes becomes a factor to supplement poor art criticism. In his case, however, this approach is risky to simplify the various amplitude of his art containing the attribute of cosmic time only to personal record. For instance, Atlas' Game is a kind of plaything to be attached strings on the crumpled terrestrial globe. Through the simple accident: crumpling, He changes the globe into the magical wonderland with new topography at a breath.
 
Actually, his language is ambivalent even when he notices his private narratives. Anyway, I'm so sorryexhibited in 2004 Gwangju Biennale looks quite serious owing to its form of writing in blood. The only quick-witted audience perceives intended roughness of editing and the hand movement like squeezing ink of pen, and cannot help laughing. Therefore the arbitrary attributes-mentioned above-of referents to be related him and the inside or outside of himself, can be understood that he uses Other's language and enjoys a symbolic game to alienate himself from the society of the Same and Universal.
On the desire to make not only message but 'code', the humor of Jin Shiu style-timid but pungent-becomes a quite effective fleeing tool. In this exhibition, he pointed out implicitly the upset of values, absurdity and contradiction, the presence of absence which exists among typical statements around him; Artist-Fine Art-Art Field. For Juggling, he made the trichromatic paper paste by using exhibition leaflets delivered to him, after classifying them into R(Red), G(Green), B(Blue) colors. Then he created a green ball, a red gum and a blue boomerang for pet dogs. Eventually these objects-the ball without bounce, the gum not to chew and the boomerang not to return-become unidentified something.

Jugglingis self-ridiculous joke to break down still overloaded aura of Art and to dismantle itself. And Inter-View and Conversation tickle our lung again in respect that he visualize the ambivalence-the hope to communication, nevertheless the support to impossibility of communication in art-into the conversation paradoxically.
 
Inter-Viewis the artwork that three syllogistic sentences from Paik Namjun’s interview: ‘When society get rotten, art gets on, Korean society is rotten, Korean art is hopeful', are engraved by filling Korean grass seeds into the bubble wrap. When the bubble wrap pops out, the utterance of an artist will bud out and spread as vitality like grass on a desolate plain. This work began from the thought; what a young artist reacts to the specific attitude of contemporary artists and supports it, is one way to reveal his own attitude actively, and it contacts with the communication in art. These works are the homage to two artists: Gim Hongsok and Bach Yiso who have been his spiritual mentors and professors in school. On the other hand, Conversation consists of two parts; the dedicational video work entitled I'm missing the one star to Bach Yiso's Big Dipper in Eight Star and an antithesis of Gim Hongsok's Jesus, I'm restless, a sentence written by fake excrements. In the end, the conversation of which he has dreamt might be like Zen masters'. It is only given to people who continues highly spiritual training beyond the level of explanation and comprehension, or assertion and persuasion. It is just artists’ discourse that he cannot but hold as an introvert by birth.
 
Incidentally, even his choice about materials probably relevant to his financial condition outshines with the multi-layered attitude of his artworks. The stars in I'm missing the one star is the lights of gallery where he used to work as a studio. Jesus, he needs rest, Jin Shiu's consolation to the soliloquy of Gim Hongsok, is made of just butter to be cut by knife carefully(Look at Starship, his another work, to consist of the plastic dishes of Chinese restaurant that he used to order!). 
While boarding his simple spaceship with him together, exploring into the maze of 'the difference' woven like a net and continuing enjoyable trip, the pathos to be felt from his back abruptly might be explained by his notes about A knot, instead. 
 
'A knot is the perfect or safe image which a kid playing alone dreams about. The kid imagines that he can land beautifully provided the kind of joint, even though jumping at an altitude of 10,000 feet.' 
In a certain sense, he may have too sensitive soul to endure this rough earthly art field. I don't know exactly what can be a knot to fasten him, or whether the absence of it can replace the role. Whatever it is, I hope that it make us indulge his artworks continuously to be filled with paradoxical fantasies to hit the conventions which hardly become soft. 

By Ziyi Zang (ziyizang@hotmail.com)