| A “Barcode Landscape” Mediating the Codified Society and the Trans-codified Nature | |
A “Barcode Landscape” Mediating the Codified Society and the Trans-codified Nature - Choi KwangJin(Art Critic) In the Asian tradition, landscape painting was understood as a practice of meditation for noblemen to escape the secular temptations and train their minds through nature. The Asian people strived to empty the desires and obsessions of the mind by looking at the constantly changing, yet harmonious essence of nature and its vitality. By contemplating the vivacity of nature and translating them into a landscape painting, they aimed to recreate the presence of nature in everyday life. This concept is essentially contrary to that of landscape painting in the West, which understood the genre as an expression of man’s superiority over nature. HyunYoung Oh’s oeuvre presents unique landscape paintings that follow the Asian tradition of landscape painting, yet reflect a contemporary sensibility. The uniqueness of her work lies in the way in which the artist replaces the “texture stroke,” often used to depict mountain, rocks, and dirt in traditional landscape paintings, with barcodes. Barcodes, which consist of vertical lines of different widths designed to code and identify commodities, have become a symbol of culture that is now inseparable from modern life. Its culture was designed to conveniently manage products by mechanically quantifying them, but it seems it has also quantified the warmth and humanity of the marketplace in the past, where goods were bought and sold, or exchanged. HyunYoung Oh’s landscape paintings are created by collecting and enlarging barcodes from various products, which are then silkscreened onto the canvas. Barcodes, which solely consists of numbers and vertical lines, may be rather restrictive as a formal language to express the vibrant and ever-changing nature. Moreover, the silkscreen method used to print the barcodes on the canvas may also be unsuited to create painterly expression. At the same time, however, these unsuitable choices are what makes Oh’s paintings fresh and contemporary. Layering the countless barcodes to recreate nature, the process of Oh’s paintings can be urgent and demanding as building an oasis on a barren desert. Through the process, the artist reflects our contemporary society where everything – even humanity – is quantified and codified, while dreaming of the romantic days of the analogue era. Ultimately, the work aims to mediate the desolate, codified society in our rapidly changing times, with trans-codified nature. Oh’s recent work introduced in this exhibition demonstrates how the barcode format, which the artist has explored for many years, has matured in ways that reflect more freedom in its painterly expression. The central work of the exhibition, Barcode Landscape of Mt. Geumgang, appropriates Kim KyuJin’s early twentieth century painting, Landscape of Mt. Geumgang, with Oh’s unique barcode format. Capturing the mountainous beauty of Mt. Geumgang, the original work is widely known for its exceptional representation of steep cliffs and sky-high rocks. This particular site of the mountain has been explored by numerous landscape painters in the past, including the renowned eighteenth century master Jeong Seon (pen name Gyeomjae). Kim KyuJin was commissioned to paint the scenery as a mural for the Hoejeongdang Pavilion of the royal palace in 1920, and eventually finished the work in a large-scale format of over 8 meters in width to capture the panoramic view of the landscape. Referencing Kim’s masterpiece, Oh completed the painting in the same 8-meter-wide format after over a year of meticulous production process. The painting captures the earlier mural’s magnificently layered mountain peaks and dense forest of autumn foliage in the artist’s unique barcode technique. The misty cloud and fog of the original is replaced by modern skyscrapers, while the blue water of the stream is transformed into barcodes. In the history of Asian landscape painting which spans over thousands of years, there has never been a single artist who has captured nature in such a way. The barcodes were invented in the mid-twentieth century, and no one could have imagined them as a medium for expressing nature. HyunYoung Oh’s paintings, on the other hand, pleasantly surprise the viewers by utilizing such mundane symbol an aesthetic expression. The barcodes, which have now become the signature motif of the artist, translate our contemporary society – where even humanity is becoming increasingly mechanized and codified – into a beautiful landscape with a sense of humor. In her work, the capitalist symbol of barcodes, and images of receipts from the local grocery store, freely float over the imagery of nature through which sages and lofty noblemen of the past once explored to train their minds. In this context, Oh’s work propels the viewers to contemplate on the important things we have lost along the way in our contemporary society, as we embark on the rapidly-changing era of the fourth industrial revolution. |
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ARTIST Criticism
