Many modern people think that ‘speed’ and ‘busy life’ have an important worth in their life. We struggle to be faster and society demands busy life from an individual too. However, what can we get from fast and busy life? Is it true that these lives give satisfaction and happiness after busy life? Maybe it is not true. According to statistics of 178 nations from New Economics Foundation (NEF), England’s economic foundation, Vanuatu, a small island country located in Oceania, took the first ranking but the US where seems to have more faster and busier life than any other countries was ranked 150th.
Our thinking that speed and busy life are the worthiest is wrong. We are losing happiness and satisfaction of life because of speed and busy life. Furthermore, these did not leave margin that can think meaning of our existence. We need new meaning about time. There is an exhibition that can give new meaning about time to us. This exhibition named ‘Lucy and Her Time’ renews former thinking about time. It comments on way how we must think about time and existence.
This exhibition is held on ‘Rodin gallery’, located in Taepyongro 2- Ga, Chung- Ku, Seoul. The artist, Jae Eun Choi, had a display after fourteen year’s absence within the country. She has built overall art crossing frequently boundary of various genre: a piece, installation, construction, and latest movie etc. She has searched for ‘time and existence’ through experimental approach which graft science into art. She is already famous for some art works, <room of line> (1998), Sung-cheol’s pagoda preserving relics of the Buddha, and <Synchronous> (1990), an art work which set up three thousand bamboo on Kyung-dong church.
Cycle of existence
This exhibition gives a message about cycle of existence. All lives circulate constantly through birth and death. There is not any eternal life and human is same one. This limit of life time make people reflect on their cling and greed. First entering the exhibition hall, we can see that there are overall white walls and big glass windows so it is very bright. And also we can hear the music of birds somewhere. These mean morning. After experience fresh morning, we view some art works that flow into past time step by step. Finally, when we go out of the exhibition hall, we arrive in the morning over again. In other words, arrangement of exhibition hall has a meaning of cycle.
This meaning appears in some art works, too. ‘Timeless’ (2007) and ‘Self’ (2007) have a point of sameness which express cycle of existence. All these are made by glittering meteorite dust. A meteorite constantly turns along an orbit for greatly long time, so the artist purposely used meteorite dust in her art works to express cycle. Beside ‘Cycle’ (2007) show that a sphagnum’s birth and death. ‘Pleasure, Anger, Sorrow, Comfortable’ (2007) consists of four screen showing a dancer who is expressing human’s typical four emotions: pleasure, anger, sorrow, and comfortable. These pictures on TV screen are repeated every 3 minutes like emotion change of our life. “Showing this art picture, I thank that I must have generous attitude on my emotions, because there is not eternal emotion. Whether happiness or sadness, it is, finally, disappeared and new emotion will occupy that place soon. Therefore we don’t need excessive sadness or happiness.” Shin Hye-kyeong, spectator, a bank employee living in Nowon-Gu, said.
Gazing the past days
The artist, Jae Eun Choi, go back to the past days. ‘Looking at the star’ (2007) look like an opened window. Many insects in amber are on this work of art, and these fossils dye us in remote ages. If you see these insects closely, maybe you will want to speak to them. Moreover, entirely opened window tempt us to come up close and look at this fossils.
In the end of this exhibition, there is the masterpiece, ‘Lucy’. It is as big as a refrigerator and white, so it is looked like huge bones. In fact, it imitated Lucy’s bone of pelvis; Lucy is the first one among women founded until now and she lived before about three million years. Jae Eun Choi’s Lucy grew out of anthropological image and imagination. It is organized of many pieces looked like organism’s cell, so although it is just bones died before three million years, it give a feeling that it is living and breathing vividly. Lucy is not only physical existence proving human’s evolution, also is a living intermediation between the present and the past. In Lucy, we will travel back three million years to discover ourselves and realize the meaning of existence. Furthermore, we will imagine future. So to speak, Lucy means infinite time.
To use time efficiently, we are likely to live according to tight schedule. However, these activities, finally, make people into time’s slave and give mental and physical pressure to us. Choi Mi-jeong, a university student living in Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, said, “There is a talk that invention of clock make people lost their margin. Unlike former time when a clock was invented, now we are locked in clock’s time repeated each day, ignoring physical rhythm and condition. Viewing Lucy who means infinite time, I felt that I must have a margin of life, according to a woman who lived before three million years has a margin and simplicity.” When we meet Lucy, our comfortable travel of time will be started. If you are stressed by complicated and busy life, maybe Lucy will give a clue.
Interview
Can you tell me a summary of Lucy exhibition?
“Lucy’s Time,” Jae Eun Choi’s solo exhibition is a travel of time in search of Lucy, an archetype of life that also symbolizes temporality. The exhibition seeks to find new meanings of time by following the artist’s process of reflection. The present exhibition embodies the artist’s concept of circulation of time and existence through the cyclical layout placing the beginning and the end with each other. We embark on a time travel at the moment we entered the exhibition gallery, and at the end of the exhibition, when we encounter Lucy, we start on another time travel-in search of Lucy’s time, in search of ourselves.
What is a special meaning that ‘Lucy and Her Time’ gives to us?
At the core of the exhibition is World Underground Project, the basis of Choi’s recent practice, along with a series of current works. The theme of the exhibition-“Lucy’s time”-not only clarifies in a focused manner the consistent interest in “time and existence” that Choi has maintained for long , but also significantly offers an opportunity for her to deepen such interests through anthropological imagination and interpretation. For viewers, this is also an opportunity to reflect on the concept of existence and time-that is, how living beings are born, grow, and die in the midst of relationships between nature and humanity, generating in the process endless evolution and history.
TIP
Lucy and Her Time
Date: 2007.09.21 ~ 2007.11.18
Place: 'Rodin gallery', Taepyongro 2- Ga, Chung- Ku, Seoul
Reference: Homepage: http://rodin.samsungfoundation.org/
Tel: 02-2259-7781~2