HEESOOAGNESKIM
From the series of legend (傳說)
Conversation with Vincent Van Gogh
I stand before a man, and I confess.
Maybe he is a lover who wants o leave me.
Maybe he is my teacher, the priest who has known me since I was a child.
Maybe he is my therapist, my brother, my inspiration. Whoever he is, he listens and then he reaches out to give me what I need to heal.
I don’t know if it had actually happened, or if I dreamed this. But it doesn’t matter.
This was the moment I had to capture and bring to life.
This is about a confession.
If you were confessing, what truth would you speak?
What is the truth you seek and what truth would you receive back?
Given a single moment with the power to bring any one person into his space, who would it be?
A confession is a dubious thing. To confess something finally brings one relief.
But what are the consequences of this bearing of the soul? What will you receive?
Will it be what you expect and will heal your pain?
Conversation with Vincent Van Gogh _single channel video_1' _2008 1888 _single channel video_9' 18" _2008
A rabbit in the moon _single channel video_13' 43" _2009
I believe understanding identity is like reading a pattern. East Asian culture educates young children through storytelling to see the two rabbits embedded within the moon, while Western culture sees a man in the moon. . When I was young in Korea I was told that there are two rabbits in the moon, pounding away making moon cakes. In teaching children to see rabbits in the moon, I learned or was force to read a certain pattern in the Moon. Lacan describes this type of cultural process as the mirror stage, where the child takes on the language and belief systems from the other and tries to accommodate its fantasy of the other.
The performance subsequently allows the audience an insight into another aspect of the rabbit as a being on its own right. It is both a rabbit in the moon and a rabbit that has never been to the moon. This is a form of challenge to society’s construct of the myth.
In it, I play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and as the title of the music suggests, the rabbit acknowledges its existence within the moon; it does not reject its environment. I had special lessons in which I was taught to play the piece “the way it should be played”. My intention was to capture the learned responses to performing this piece.
Excuse me while I disappear _single channel video_50' 43" _2009
When I first visited New Zealand my tour guide told me that Rangitoto Island looks the same from any angle. At the same time, it can be dangerous and erupt at any time.
The journey to Rangitoto Island allowed me to explore mythical and iconic Island's identity from the point of view of others.
On the way back, all of sudden, I was staring at my reflection formed on the window. The reflection over wrapped with Rangitoto. I discovered that the myth of perfectly formed Island was not true at all. Then from a random spot toward the end of the day, the island appeared as a completely different shape and I found an element of bare beauty.
At Pearce Gallery 130 St Georges Bay Road _two channel video_2009
Bongcheon (봉천, 奉天) _Time Lapse Photograph Digital Video Projection_ 17' 12 "_ 2015
I received mail stating that the district of Bongcheon-dong(奉天洞), named to mean “serving heaven and/or pay tribute to the sky ,” would be renamed Jung’ang-dong on January 23, 2015. The ceaseless noise from construction sites here and there and the increasingly higher buildings seem to be directed at an even higher sky. Neighborhoods dotted with shantytowns expressed by the stereotype of “moon neighborhoods” (hillside slums) and fortunetelling houses operated by mudang (Korean shamans) coexist with tall apartments whose redevelopment has already begun.
Bongcheon (봉천,奉天) is a video work consisting of twelve frames of photographs taken at 15-minute intervals. This maximizes movement in stillness by fast forwarding 180 seconds of time in reality into 1-second-long images. While the video shows and reflects the temporal flow of the repetition of sunrise and sunset, time flows backward in the latter half so that the video ends with the same perspective as at the beginning.
Matador _Performance_ digital video still_ 2015
I hiked up Bongcheon-dong while holding a white flag and a red one, starting at the buildings in the shantytowns dotted with mudang’s fortunetelling houses in the lower part of the district, passing through maze-like alleys, and ending at soaring apartments. In addition, I disappeared among the high buildings, which seemed to touch the sky.
