“ All kinds of buildings talk something in one way or another. Furthermore they talk about themes that can be classified easily. They talk about democracy, aristocracy, opening, haughtiness, illusion or threat, sympathy of the future or longing for the past ”
- The architecture of happiness , Alain de Botton
We are influenced by our circumstances. Thinking reversely, this space in which we are living is the reflection of our culture, thought, and our time. Familiar landscapes composed by the skyscrapers, high buildings, apartments, and roads connecting cities to the other cities are similar to the structure of modern society which is being networked.
Even in the 1990’s, buildings more than 16 floors could be prescribed as ultra high buildings in Korea, but nowadays the buildings over 35 floors can be classified ultra high ones. And what does the landscape of the cities going to the sky incessantly talk to us?
‘The Architecture Landscape’ is going to be held from 6th June to 30 June in ‘Art Space Plastic’ located in Jakjeon-dong, Incheon city. The exposition is going to be sponsored by Incheon Culture Fund and Jinyoung Plastic co. The artists are going to show us the reinterpreted works of the landscapes and histories of the old town and the new town from the point of artist’s view. These two artists are interpreting the same district very differently each other, and they are trying to show paintings, photos, drawings in carious shapes, and by doing so they also try to transform and extend the concepts of existing landscape.
Shin Jisun’s works take a starting point from a trivial observation of existing concrete places, or ordinary things. And the she takes out truly unawared stories by probing into daily life. We can divided spaces into two parts: a visible physical space, and communal or regional space that is invisible but really existing one. The familiar landscapes of modern society expressed in Shin’s works are restored toe the epistemological space from the physical one. The monotonous and deeply individual space of ‘apartment’ is transformed into the dynamic and organic space that is communicating with the universe. The collected brand logos of the apartments from Incheon area are reborned as collage works containing the new history if Kyesan-dong. And the series of drawings ‘the way of applicating roadside trees’ are works by reinterpreting the roadside trees arbitrarily. Also they present various ways of life co-relating with our physical surroundings.
Che Jinsuk is talking consistently the ambition to ‘successes’ by the image of ‘castle’. The European palaces of fables and cartoons of Disney Land are always exist with us as a wedding hall, villas, motels, grand marts as well as kindergarten, toy shop, playing ground. The alien architectures different from spaces of our modern cities are offering awkward landscapes, even though they are taking palaces deeply into our daily life and as a cultural landscape of this era. They are the obscure longing objects from our childhood and maybe the mirages of the ‘utopia’ dreamed by stereotyped and dreary modern society. The artist was seeking for messages of hope from the gorgeous images of the castles, and she is talking about the lust for success incessantly. She is trying to talk about the stories about plain wishes that can come true or not through installation and video, performances, and paintings.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: Ji-sun Shin and Jin-suk Che
June 6 to 30, 2008, Art Space Plastic
Incheon City, South Korea
