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| Rob Miles' lithograph, "Kitchen V.VII" (2020) / Courtesy of SNUMoA |
By Park Han-sol
The COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year and the worldwide crisis has forced a reconsideration of everything we thought we knew.
The shared frustration stemming from the initial physical isolation and the widened social and economic divisions have forever changed the collective idea of what constitutes our everyday reality. Of course, the art world has been no exception.
"The so-called 'daily life' is a theme that has been very often explored by the artists. But today, after COVID-19 as well as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, it has taken on a completely different meaning," Francoise Docquiert, Paris-based art critic, curator and former professor at Pantheon-Sorbonne University, said at a press conference last week in southwestern Seoul.
Her remarks, made in celebration of the opening of "Daily Life Not So Simple," Seoul National University Museum of Art's (SNUMoA) first international exhibition since the COVID-19 outbreak, introduce contemporary creators' alternative ways of looking at day-to-day life not as a dramatic spectacle.
Featuring some 150 paintings, sculptures and tapestries, the show puts 14 artists based in Korea and France in dialogue with one another and calls attention to their attempts to weave into their depictions of everyday scenery the timely questions of climate change, animal-human relationships and memory, among others.
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| Moon Chae-won's "Untitled (Cover Your Face Till Further Notice)" (2021) / Courtesy of SNUMoA |
One of the artists, Rob Miles, steers away from the conventional technique of linear perspective, which aims to create the illusion of depth in space. He puts a visual twist on common daily living spaces in his series of paintings, collages and lithographs by reassembling them into composite, multi-perspective art.
"In my work, I'm constantly trying to question the space in the image. I draw from life, observation and memory. In my recent work, I've been trying to unfold the spaces that I see around me to have perspectives that are mixed," the 35-year-old said at the museum.
While his oeuvre is reminiscent of diverse cultural influences ― from ancient Egyptian art and Cubism to today's aerial photography ― it's also a visualization of our changing perception toward the idea of home and our existence within the confines of four walls following the pandemic.
Moon Chae-won takes a rather witty approach in portraying society as an ever-fluctuating, indefinable space.
She appropriates the format used by typical manuals and guides, which are designed to be an intuitive, universal book of instructions for everyone to follow. However, her version is "a non-functioning, error-ridden pseudo-manual," according to the artist's definition.
By purposefully painting an illogical world with visuals taken out of their original context, Moon highlights the existence of certain individual values and traits that deviate from the "accepted social order" and are bound to complicate the idea of a uniform, homogeneous society.
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| Park Si-wol's "Where Are You Going 3" (2021) / Courtesy of SNUMoA |
Meanwhile, the paintings produced by Park Si-wol provide a renewed sense of escape and healing.
The artist combines the images of serene moments drawn from other people's memories with her own emotions and experiences in her dreamlike oeuvre. She captures the ethereal, shapeless quality of such memory by applying pencil marks and oil paint to glass, the surface of which has been rubbed with sandpaper.
"Daily Life Not So Simple" runs through Nov. 27 at the SNUMoA.
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