NOTE FOR AHN(安), GALLERY 175, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, 2019
Exhibition Note for AHN (安) was a two-person exhibition I organized with Ahn Jaeyoung, which began from the question of whether an individual could escape from being possessed — one of the mysterious symptoms containing elements of superstition from Korea. The exhibition, tracks how images attained from one’s superstitious beliefs relate to mythical and religious images, then recombines and deconstructs them. Under our collaboration lies the hope to contact invisible but clearly existing sensual phenomena, and to together overcome anxieties, interpreting phenomena as the destiny of artist/mediator.
Paying attention to the number of tattoos on Ahn Jaeyoung‘s body (the Chinese character 安, a blue diamond, an arrow, a red-haired Anne, Piglet, Mickey Mouse, and an epitaph of Nikos Kazantzakis), I interpreted each image as a charm to ward off Ahn’s anxieties. I then, researched mythical and religious imagery in order to strengthen the shamanistic narrative. Observing that the number 12 frequently works as important motive in the myths of many different cultures, I set Ahn Jaeyoung‘s birthday, December 12, as a central axis and tried to discover the references to god-related signs from the number 12. Combining the symbolic world of the image, language, color, and numbers from ancient myths from twelve animals that guards tombs, I created a chart for a system of faith and proposed a psychological space for a praying man, just like the secret connotation of the ancient character, 安
NOTE FOR AHN(安), GALLERY 175, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, 2019
Exhibition Note for AHN (安) was a two-person exhibition I organized with Ahn Jaeyoung, which began from the question of whether an individual could escape from being possessed — one of the mysterious symptoms containing elements of superstition from Korea. The exhibition, tracks how images attained from one’s superstitious beliefs relate to mythical and religious images, then recombines and deconstructs them. Under our collaboration lies the hope to contact invisible but clearly existing sensual phenomena, and to together overcome anxieties, interpreting phenomena as the destiny of artist/mediator.
Paying attention to the number of tattoos on Ahn Jaeyoung‘s body (the Chinese character 安, a blue diamond, an arrow, a red-haired Anne, Piglet, Mickey Mouse, and an epitaph of Nikos Kazantzakis), I interpreted each image as a charm to ward off Ahn’s anxieties. I then, researched mythical and religious imagery in order to strengthen the shamanistic narrative. Observing that the number 12 frequently works as important motive in the myths of many different cultures, I set Ahn Jaeyoung‘s birthday, December 12, as a central axis and tried to discover the references to god-related signs from the number 12. Combining the symbolic world of the image, language, color, and numbers from ancient myths from twelve animals that guards tombs, I created a chart for a system of faith and proposed a psychological space for a praying man, just like the secret connotation of the ancient character, 安
Installation view of Jan van eyck academie openstudios 2021 Still cut, The geometry of the hunter, Single channel video, 2021
Jan van Eyck Academie Open Studio, The Geometry of the hunter, Rehearsal, Maastricht, NL, 2021 Photo. Romy Finke
The geometry of the hunter
Online event, 19:00
Thursday 1 July 2021
The geometry of the hunter is inspired by the process of rewriting "Blue Tigers" by Jorges Luis Borges into "Blue deers." It rearranges the dynamics of tiger and deer, animal and hunter across 20th century, and attempts to " be a hunter” based on sniper’s note by interpreting geometric objects within the relationship between body and clothing.
https://www.janvaneyck.nl/calendar/boram-soh-the-geometry-of-the-hunter
Still cut, The geometry of the hunter, Single channel video, 2021
Cultivation of biodegradable skin from fermented tea leaves, Jan van eyck academie 2020
One summer night, when only her car’s headlights shone in the dark, Boram Soh collided with the already flattened body of a water deer. Looking up, she caught the eyes of a fawn orbiting the corpse. Transfixed by the traumatic memory of meeting the young deer’s gaze, her work has adopted the shining pupils of one and the flat body of the other as the relationship between the sun of age-old mythical narratives and the biodegradable skin of fermented tea leaves. Her experiments evoke an Egyptian mummy’s dry skin, a water deer’s torn skin, and living human skin, as they extend from the biochemistry of plants and animals to hydrogen-based material communities.
Soh’s research juxtaposes the mechanics of matter with abstract concepts of light and darkness, life and death, sacrifice and regeneration. She singularly interprets symbols and sign systems, translating them into hieroglyphics. Through projections of material embodiments in an immanent if precarious future, she tracks water deer across South Korea’s capitalist and ecological landscapes from ancient cave paintings to the present day.
Jan van eyck openstudios, Amanda Sarroff 2021
Installation view of Jan van eyck academie openstudios 2021 Photo. Romy Finke