Plastic Syndrome (Art Space Plastic, 2009)

'Plastic' comes from the Greek word "plastikos" which means to shape or to mold. We can relate some characteristics of plastic to our modern society for the fact that it can be molded or shaped into various forms with a wide variety of use and functions.

Plastic took its essential material position in this modern society less than 100 years ago. Whether we like it or not, we utilize it in many ways because of its convenient characteristics. It can be considered a ‘major key substance’ in modern civilization more than its being an industrial substance. Some scholars defined this period to be ‘the 4th civilization age’ or the ‘Plastic Age,’ succeeding Stone Age and the Iron Age. To date, plastics confront another phase as it becomes synonymous with environmental problems, but nevertheless, we cannot deny its function and advantages to our daily living.

‘Plastic Syndrome’ intends to create an opportunity to review and reinterpret modern living as a ‘plastic society’ through art. Some participating artists took advantage of plastic as a material-substance to create art works, while others makes use of it as a metaphor to express various aspects of modern ‘plastic’ society. Nonetheless, the world they see and tell about plastic society is not limited to the features of modern man and his surroundings, vain and lacking in sincerity. And thus, they have tried to explore the real meaning in modern life by relating through the peeled, transparent and sometime glossy quality of plastic.

Even if tons of plastic products are being used and thrown away daily, most of them are being recycled repeatedly through a recycling system. And this brings us to the question of whether its incessant recycling is beneficial to our daily lives. Right at this moment, many people for sure are using plastic, drinking from plastic bottles, typing using plastic keypads, listening from their plastic radios, etc. And definitely, tons of plastic wastes are also being carried out to plastic recycling factories at this moment to be given a new life, a new form and hopefully some of them would breathe again anew through some methods of art. (- Soyeon Park, Curator, Plastic Syndrome)

Participating Artists: Jinsuk Che, Soyeon Cho, Jayeon Kwon + Jiwon Shin, Shinjung Ryu, Christopher Zamora, Carlo Gabuco, Mike Adrao