스킵네비게이션

Originally from an architecture background, Wonsuk Han has always had a fascination with found and useless objects and rubbish. For his first solo exhibition, The Flowers of Evil, Han created flowers from over 100,000 cigarette butts. Taking dirty, smelly cigarette butts and turning them into fragrant flowers was an act of reincarnation of sorts. The play between the beautiful and the trashy is what led Han to explore the world of garbage art. It is of note that even the Korean term ?sreaggi,?or garbage is something that was created fairly recently. A century ago, there was no need for the term because houses, clothes and other daily necessities were all made of plants, wood, stone, clay or other natural materials that could be easily recycled in some fashion. In addition, food refuse could be made into fertilizer or fed to pigs. The country was one without rubbish in any capacity. Even tobacco was cultivated naturally and rolled without materials that would become cigarette butts. Now cigarettes are prepared with chemicals in such a way that they give about five minutes of pleasure before being thrown away. Han? second solo exhibition, an installation entitled Rebirth recreates the Silla dynasty observatory from the year 1374 known as Rebirth using 1,374 discarded headlights collected over a year from over 50 different junkyards.
The piece Resonance carries on in this tradition by using between 1800 and 3200 trashed speakers to recreate a historic bell, completed in 771, known as ?mille? The artist explains that the sound of the Emille bell lives in his heart. After time and even in another place, the bell? sound stays with us. Han seeks to take this memorable timelessness of the Emille bell and juxtapose the temporary nature of the consumer culture that discarded the speakers used to make Han? bell. This juxtaposition creates new situations and artistic conditions.
While the exterior of the work resembles the original bell, it is not a copy. If Han duplicated the superficial resemblance of the bell at the Kyoungju Museum the meaning is simple, and has a single interpretation. The sound and meaning of the original bell could never be duplicated. While having the overt appearance of the bell with a minimal bell base, the sound is different and a paradox is presented. Past and present, time and place, are all contained in this bell, which while conceptually loaded is visually light.
ⓒHyungtak Jung _ Independent Curator