The Memory of Time Traverler
Memory- The Humane Time of Temporal Human
Yovi Song (Director of 10AAA)
Since 2016, the life of Shin that travels the encounter of new energy through his senses and his daily life as the adventure, rather than physical coincidence, has been the theme of his artworks. The artist expresses the contradictory present and past that he has experienced with artistic language in the world. Although incessantly traveling and leaving, the artist employs the method that reveals the inherent sense existing somewhere or not existing nowhere. It is said that Universal attitudes of human toward time are related to the relationship between 'Memory' and 'Oblivion.' What humans can do about the time that goes by regarding reason and conscious action is to manifest(remember the will to detain time, or to let go of the time (oblivion) as itis flowing.
Therefore, we may think memory and oblivion as two ways of human time. It is said for the temporal humans to establish the human time that is 'memory' can be seen as an active action to catch up on time. It is an intentional effort to think of the stationary thing in the middle of flowing. Memory is a living 'dynamic process.' The implementation of activity about a practical and dynamic life presupposes "remembering" that is the human effort to make time stay. Also, human empathy and compassion, which can also be called human time that makes people easily do this "remembering," become the theme since it remains to Shin Junmin as the experience to let him encounter new landscapes. Shin says that there are the moments when the scenery in memory meets the recent scene while he always 'observes' or 'indifferently pass by' the world surrounding himself.
Time Traveler - Familiar Encounter with Unfamiliar Scenery
On one side of the Art Space Puri were , a video work, and an installation wall that his new installation space onto which a new interpretation grafts. Unlike the way in which time is generally handled in painting, he enthusiastically reflects the harmony of light and material and the atmosphere of space according to time, rather than chooses the method presenting space, light, image, video, and painting.
«Since long ago,' the present' is only the presentization of time that has already passed. As a result, Time Concept by Gilles Deleuze, which explains that the time summarizes the different steps while establishing anew order to time, connects to the manners of this artist. Shin says 'The scene I have always met seems unfamiliar in some moment, and occasionally the landscape I look at for the first time makes me feel so familiar that I may have seen it before.' On the video, there is the gaze with which helooks back his present situation through 'unfamiliar' feeling that he often perceives in everyday life. When Pollution, an environmental pollutant that floats on water, passes over the trees reflected in the water makes people have an optical illusion as snowing.
On the right side of the installation wall, Shin produced a white hemispherical installation object. The white hemisphere is another half of the globe he used in his prior artwork, and he created a new moving object of rotation made with game device buttons in an amusement arcade, and hangers, springs and magnifying glass. Like a tool used for time travel, the moving object of rotation appears to be the only moving thing in stopped time. Also, in this show , which seemed in the previous his artwork is displayed as a stuffed specimen. It may be the future of a zoo monkey he met in the past. Using water and cement, Shin constructed a wall with the image of a monkey in pictorial expression. By adding the element that time is running in the stopped world, the artist tells the present audience that this moment maybe the future we may be going to face again or the past we may have met still, rather than the moment has already past.
The Connotation of Time Painting Heard and Felt
is located on the most extensive exhibition wall of Art Space Purl, and the artist depicts his experience of continuously staring at an apartment building in his familiar everyday life. Although this artwork is a painting, for Shin, itis a moment when experiences from the past and the recent are overlapped. By expressing the winds in front of the building that blinds sights of an audience and leaves that block the sounds of winds, the audience also has the adventure to move into the very moment. Also, the apartment that looks one complete on the screen is combined with different buildings that the artist thought they seemed same in the past and the present. Likewise, the scenes selected to the subject matter of his artworks are reconstructed after being 'remembered' by him. In this 'memory,' sometimes time is overlaid, and it seems to be one building, but it is combined many other buildings from his memory with the present ones. Therefore, the scenery of Shin Junmin embeds the narrative of epic movies with overlapping the various features of place and time. On the painting, there remain the layers of paint that are reapplied, sprayed, and pilled on canvas over many days. As Shin changes this kind of brush traces, which seem the flow of air, to the rising in the winds in , the audience would feel the whirlwind of wind in the landscape. In the , he captures music and flashy lights on the canvas. Implying diverse sounds and sensibilities like a moving image, shares the moments of his past with the audience in the present.
Objects Encountered with Anthropomorphic Scenery
We can meet the sensitive wit of Shin who once told that he chose to major in painting because of desire to draw cartoons in many of his drawings. Among them, there are sewer holes which move as if alive, car headlights, and building pipes and Shin displayed them to face each other as if they were talking. In or , though Shin has a view of an observer from outside of the scene, in this drawing, he tries to convey the voices of the subjects as if he coexists inside of the painting. As each object appears to bea character, the canvas frame is composed of like the cartoon's contents. "In my paintings, if I have overlaid the scenes according to times, on the wall installation in this show, I made a collage work combined the property of materials, matiére, and colors with sensibilities that embodied as I live and experience my daily life with the concept of 'my object'" Shin Junmin says. The artist, who discovered an aesthetic object from the ordinary minor ones, represented the trivial things around usas particular life-like objects and put them together to display a new exhibition space.
Furthermore, the landscape that was constructed in the previous artwork was reproduced in installation. In the installation of , the objects (lightings, trumpets, barbed wires, game players) that appeared as the primary materials for painting were recomposed to arch, grid, and horizontal structures. The artist says he expects 'another new encounter by constant travel through daily life.' Unlike the installation that has the physical structure that seems to go anywhere, installation, in this time, Shin built the visual adventure space that can visually shift anywhere by arranging the images from even though it physically has a wall structure. On this installation wall, we indeed meet the way Shin handled the objects in his previous works. Shin introduces the most similar form to the human figure from the 'Bocca Della Verita (Mouth of Truth. 2018). Even though he depicts the object which already exists, this figure is expressed as if it had vitality.
Urban and Nature Regarding ‘Being in the World’
It seems that he had agonized about himself as a "being in the world" on social roles of artists. Shin has participated in activities that pursuit the changes in the world around him and, at the same time, around his career and collaborate with them. It is said 'Social Existence is the existence struggling to change the conditions of existing that hinder the real existence of our social members who are needed for our society.
Shin plays an important role in the activities such as 'Sunday Paper,' "Art Space Giant, and 'Art Club Samdeok.' Amid of the movement of new art spaces in Seoul, as Shin Junmin realizes the necessity of new space for art activities for artists in the Daegu region, he participates in the management of two artspaces along with his fellow artists. The "Art Space Giant" located in Cheongtong is the place where a refrigeration warehouse was transformed into an exhibition hall, and "Art Club Samdeok" located in Daegu is a plain-looking family house. These two places were not built for the exhibition, but they were rebirth as 'art spaces' by the will of the artists. Shin Junmin, an artist, who participated in the management of this space, has attempted to exist in a way that actively involved in the circumstance and society to which he belongs.
Additionally, operating the above two places as art spaces was an essential activity for the current use and role about the past spaces around us and in cities. He identifies himself as an active member who leads social trends and solves the problems rather than the one who fights to solitude in the studio for his artworks. Shin simultaneously captures both the city and nature. In his artwork, no people are passing by in streets of the city, but only buildings are represented as city landscapes.
How do we know if we are aware of the way to know the existence?
By his artworks and activities in awhile, the artist describes the way we can perceive an 'existence' through the relationships, and other conditions in the society to which one belongs. With the movement of cloth in the middle of the frame and the spooky atmosphere, the wind that blows in expresses the presence of the invisible "wind.'"In the film, «Adventure (2018) >, Shin reminds us of problems in the cities and nature. The images begin with a surface view of the polluted stream. The waste that humans throw away covers nature, and dark, strange bubbles and mysterious clumps float on the water. However, the pollutants seem like snow because they blend with the sky and trees reflected on the water. This artist presents the problems of the city environment with his wit.
In , video footage which contradictorily comes from the natural environment near the artist's house, night, day, shore, and so on, the camera moves with the sight of the artist, so the pictorial representations and visual compositions of the artist are unfolded together. Ifso, where did the 'people' who consist of the city disappear?
The only object that resembles a human figure is the shape that appears in . On the screen, humans were the passing away the background, and he clearly shows their presence. Maybe the wind and light are replacing human beings. For installed with video works, Shin applies blue and green lights, transparent plastic panel materials and cement corresponding to architectural materials that mesh with urban development. Besides, Shin put the experience of the nature of the polluted city that we would accept as beautiful one in his film. It seems that the artist delivers a message to society through his pieces of works that displayt he opposite meaning and phenomena of negativity and positivity in one same space and time. The reason the entire exhibition hall is considered to be a miniature of the city where we live is that the present position and the starting point are "the routine." It will be the time for us to look at the landscape and structures of the society where we live right now through visually expressed the scenery that is the invisible landscape of sensibilities.