Celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the KCC, 'Ring: a Circle and a Sqaure' exhibition is the first brought overseas, presenting contemporary Korean art pieces to every Hongkongers. Starting from 5th February to 7th March, the exhibition will be displayed at Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong.

The exhibition was selected by Arts Council Korea and it was presented at Korea Insa Art Space last year from August to October. Four Korean contemporary artists Mooyoung KIM, KEEM Jiyoung, Euirock LEE, and Woosung LEE participated by the curation of Hee Young CHUNG. Artists expressed their thoughts with drawing, painting, video, photo and installation arts, evoking the psychological and social violence that has not been recognized in everyday life. 

Preface 

(Curator, Hee Young Chung / Translator, Eunice Sang Eun Lee)

Ring: a Circle and a Square

拳擊台：亦圓亦方

“A ring denotes a circle; to a boxer, however, it is a square.”

- So-yeon KIM, poet. One-Word Dictionary

*

Can a circle look like a square? Better yet, can a circle be both a circle and a square at the same time? The exhibition title, “Ring: a Circle and a Square” comes from poet So-yeon Kim’s words. Through simple shapes like circles and squares, she explains the relationship between violence and the everyday. The title also works as a metaphor for the moment when attention shifts from the everyday to violence. The exhibition itself is on violence, but it does not objectify or limit the type of violence it explores. It does not point to specific societal disasters and atrocities, or particularly focus on oppression and injustice.

The exhibition begins in the everyday. The artist’s everyday, to be exact. “Ring: a Circle and a Square” focuses on the process through which the artist uses art to connect their everyday with scenes of violence. As such, the exhibition puts together artists whose works sharply focus on violence, and those whose works explore from afar. Mooyoung Kim, Jiyoung Keem, Woosung Lee and Euirock Lee approach violence from different angles and vantage points. Their works remind us that it is natural to react to and approach violence in different ways.

The curator asks, what moves an artist to react to violence? In what ways does an artwork reveal violence? Four artists answer these questions through their recent works, and the curator answers by bringing together and rearranging the images and objet d’art. Each level provides structure to different violence: the violence that silently permeates into life, the violence that bursts, and the violence so familiar that it no longer registers. The curator wove a narrative through different artworks that provides careful insight into violence. At the transition points from one perspective to another, she placed specific artworks as signposts and placed the four artists in dialogue with each other.

**

To return to the subject of violence, I am aware that I exist as a distant bystander from violence, both as a concept and lived experience. I understand that it is so easy to be caught up in simply looking, and remain silent in the face of violence. Art, however, stirs the inner desire to rebel against the easy.

Witnessing history repeat itself, we already understand that progress is neither linear nor ensured. The passage of time alone does not provide solutions. People like to posit that there are two types of people—those sensitive to violence and those who are not— when, in fact, the difference lies between those who experience violence but do not register it as such and those who can no longer turn a blind eye to violence because they see it for what it is.

Art inspires us to be better when people no longer hide behind the passage of time. Art allows us to feel violence as violence, and become more attuned to violent acts. Of course, the circle will not seem like a square overnight. It may be difficult to explain that a circle could indeed be a ring. When we bear witness to the daunting immensity and rigidity of structural violence, we may even want to give up, frustrated with feelings of helplessness.

Even so, the artist will always attempt to call attention to the moment when a circle becomes a square. They never seem to give up. The curator too inevitably comes to support what the art seeks to reveal. The word, solidarity, holds so much potential that is so difficult to fulfill, even when it is used to describe an artist and a curator. Recalling Eun-Young Jin’s last sentence on the cover of her first poetry collection, we urge ourselves to continue. “Friend, let’s get to the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if we, at times, come to doubt each other and hate each other to death.” We are on a journey we cannot abandon; surely, we can hold true to Jin's words. Let us get to the light at the end of the tunnel. Let us get there together.

Woosung Lee 李宇城 

People Running in Sweat , 2019, water based paint, acrylic gouache, 165 x 300cm

Recalling the violence so prevalent in our times, Woosung Lee fills the space with figures of running people. His detailed facial expressions depict those who persevere and take a step forward, rather than those who crumple under the pressure of violence. 

Mooyoung Kim 金武永

Inscribed Senses , 2019, single channel video, 33′59″

Under Chunghee Park’s regime, architect Swoo-geun Kim built the Freedom Center for an anti-communist conference with an anti-communist agenda. Countless artists under Syngman Rhee’s regime produced fiction around the Yeosu–Suncheon Incident. Using the conditions of representation in the Freedom Center and anti-communist films as evidence, Mooyoung Kim presents an ideology of representation that binds the artist.

Keem Jiyoung 金志泳

I Gouge My Eyes Out to See You , 2019, aluminium, glass, plywood, sound, dimensions variable

On the wall is a sentence written out with broken pieces of glass, with a picture frame bent out of shape leaning against it. Broken pieces of glass on the wall form the shape of the sentence “I gouge my eyes out to see you,” visually demonstrating the desire to bear witness to the structure of violence hidden in the dark.

Euirock Lee 李宜祿

Lagrange Point , 2019, single channel video, 30′15″

Euirock Lee visualizes gravity, a force that is not visible or palpable, but nonetheless exists in our everyday lives. Lagrange point refers to the five points at which the gravity between the Earth and other planetary bodies in space cancel out to zero. By interviewing astronomers in their journey to find the Lagrange point, Lee attempts to find memory’s inflection point that impacts our lives.