Artists Create Fun, Message at `Recycling Inc.
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
Recycling is a far-fetched idea in contemporary South Korea, where pricey cell phones and TV sets get dumped just because better-looking, more fancy, expensive new models are continuously coming out.
But at Arko Arts Center's annual thematic exhibition ``Recycling Inc.,'' 10 artists gathered to highlight various meanings of recycling in a perky and imaginative way.
Here, the word recycling has less to do with the environmental consciousness than with its symbolic meaning of a circle often found in the workings of art and society.
Curators say that they want the viewers' experience of interacting with various programs at the exhibition to be ``recycled'' into humor and ideas in their everyday lives.
The journey through the process of recycling _ selection, collection, possession, consumption and reproduction _ begins at a pseudo ticket box set up outside the exhibition hall, where viewers receive an entrance ticket _ an empty box and plastic bag _ from artist Yoo Young-ho's ``The Shop MuseuM.''
Artist Shin Hyun-jung installed a post office made out of classical red telephone booths, where he hands out post cards to viewers. When you write a message to the artist, a reply will reach your written address afterward.
The viewers will then walk by a line formed on wall by the hanging pictures, taken from ``The Silk Road Project'' of artist Chung Jae-chul. The artist took used advertising banners from Seoul streets to diverse communities in Korea, China, India, Pakistan and Nepal, where they were turned into other uses, including parasols. Viewers will see how an object can be recycled in different culture and system.
Inside the exhibition hall, 400 florescent lights artist Park Yong-seok collected from demolition areas blink beside a TV monitor. ``I describe apartments and buildings to be demolished as a kind of mirages of contemporary society. We can face the instant _ the present state of a city that is moving to somewhere else _ in an empty space that is brightened by the lights doomed to be demolished,'' the artist said.
On the other side of Park's space is artist Sasa's (44) altar dedicated to Cho Yong-pil, South Korea's most celebrated, all-time favorite pop singer. The artist's obsessive collector's streak shines with golden frames that surround impressive images of the superstar.
There are also artist Sah Sung-bee, who set up an ``Arko branch of Brand B'' and invites viewers to take part in creating tailored clothes items; Lee Mi-kyung, who built a pseudo museum lounge with objects taken from her own living room; Ko Won, who transforms the scraps from the covers of magazines like ``Life'' and ``Zeit'' during the 1970s into literary pieces by combining them with his own poems; Lee Yun-kyung, who used two coverless grand pianos with censor-attached strings to make music with viewers' movements; Hong Kyoung-tack, who created a ``cocoon'' out of old bobbins densely installed on a wall.
Perhaps the highlight of the exhibition will be staged on June 30, when the local band the Moonshiners performs under the title ``Yongpil Under Moonlight With Moonshiners.''
The Moonshiners, a three-piece rock'n' roll band, will surely go well with the exhibition themed on recycling, with their retro-style music. Its gum-chewing, Pompadour-haired lead vocalist and guitarist Cha Seung-woo, known these days as Cha Cha, is an indie scene darling who played in the punk band No Brain before.
The exhibition runs until July 25 at Arko Arts Center in Daehangno, near Hyehwa Station on subway line 4. For more information, visit www.arko.or.kr.