AUGUST 4TH, 2019 

'DECONSTRUCTIVISM' l DAESOO KIM, SICHAN PARK, JOONGKEUN LEE, SUNGPIL HAN, SEUNGWOO BACK, BEOMSIK WON, MOONHEE CHO

< DECONSTRUCTIVISM>展 ㅣ김대수, 박시찬, 이중근, 한성필, 백승우, 원범식, 조문희

갤러리비케이 ㅣ Gallery BK, Seoul

2019. 08. 02 - 08. 30

“Any consequent deconstruction would be negligible if it did not take account of this resistance and this transference; it would do little if it did not go after architecture as much as architectonics. To go after it: not in order to attack, destroy or de-route it, to criticize or disqualify it. Rather, in order, to think it in fact, to detach itself sufficiently to apprehend it in a thought which goes beyond the theorem – and becomes a work in its turn”. - Jacques Derrida (Miantenant l’architecture, cit., p. 9).

"The form is distorting itself. Yet this internal distortion does not destroy the form. In a strange way, the form somehow remains intact. This is an architecture of disruption, dislocation, deflection deviation, and distortion, rather than one of demolition, dismantling, decay, decomposition, or disintegration. It displaces structure instead of destroying it. " - Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley (Deconstructivist architecture (1988))

Gallery BK is pleased to present 'DECONSTRUCTIVISM', a group photography exhibition, featuring works by Daesoo KIM, Sichan PARK, Joongkeun LEE, Sungpil HAN, Seungwoo BACK, Beomsik WON and Moonhee CHO. The show's title is derived from one of Postmodernism's architectural movement - Deconstructivism. 

French philosopher Jacques Derrida's 'Deconstructivism' stems from Postmodernist ways of thinking, which expandbeyond its movement and spread across various fields of visual cultures and many subjects of architecture. Derrida's theory of deconstructivism focused on conflicting concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism by breaking, disturbing and questioning underlying understandings from modernism. Hence, deconstructivism functions to explain such conflicts, questioning widely accepted knowledge and theories and also actively incorporated into visual cultures and architecture. 

Deconstructivism does not simply extrude nor destroy existing concepts, but also imply the power of maintaining the original state without losing any of its values. In another words, creation relies on deconstruction that ultimately highlights the act of 'deconstructing' through reconstruction, not destruction. 

Taking a step beyond current boundaries of architectural photography, the exhibition at Gallery BK focuses on various elements of structures that lie around us from seven different points of views by the artists. Architecture holds a special place within us as a three dimensional space; furthermore, when they are photographed and recreated intonew forms of images, lines and facets of architecture are enhanced and contain new layers of meanings. Each characteristics of architecture - such as symbolic representation in the society, textures engraved on the walls, concepts of space, forms of lines, and endless time, is explored to question what it means to be abstracted and extracted from the original space into photographs. Hence, on show will be evidence of new interpretations of architecture ultimately raising awareness to what photography means in the contemporary era. 

Structures that stand on earth where we live on also take essential parts in our daily life, affecting our societies and cities in the same manner; furthermore, photography reassembles physical structures into visual components as a method of presenting artists' perceptions of the everyday life. Viewing the world through the eyes of contemporary photographers, not the architects, this exhibition reveals images of architecture from various points of artists' perception of the world and brings the idea of architecture to a new dimension, communicating through abstractions of its original and evoking emotional experiences. 

SEUNGWOO BACK 

The term ‘Utopia’ originates from Greek ou ‘not’ and topos ’place’, coined to mean a place that exists nowhere. Processing a series of photographed realities, Back Seungwoo examines underlying illusions that are repeatedly practiced in so-called Utopia. The artist points at the fictional world through visual media and exposes North Korea’s unrealistic landscapes and overlapped paradoxes. 

MOONHEE CHO  

Instead of constructing images, Cho Moonhee disassembles and alienates her subjects from their original contexts, depicting her perception of the surrounding - different from the actual reality. The artist does not include everything that she feels, but remove and extract everyday moments that she remembers or indirect experiences she had with surrounding objects.

BEOMSIK WON  

Won Beomsik creates a sculpture made of fragments of a city that he carefully collected and analyzed. Each sculpture is recreated into mesmerizing ‘archisculpture’, consisting of existing structures that embody both historical and spatial values. Hence, such collage technique brings various elements to one shared space and gradually tells a story that no one has ever heard.

JOONGKEUN LEE 

Many of the world’s famous religious buildings stand as iconic monuments that function as strong religious beliefs and political meanings, and now serve as local landmarks and popular tourist destinations. Looking at these structures as symbolic images of both reality and illusion, Lee Joongkeun presents a series of 新殿 (or ‘new palace’) images that visualize ‘illusions of reality’ and ‘realities of illusion.’

SUNGPIL HAN

Han Sungpil explores not only the blurred line between Fine Art and Photography, but also the idea of reproduction that lies in the digital era. The artist presents photographs that include idealized images projected with the reality visible in the restoration building or an ordinary street, and raises questions on human desires with photographic images in opposite situation.

DAESOO KIM 

Daesoo Kim explores the ‘Forms follows function’ from Bauhaus through a structure built solely for the purpose of function which the artist indicates as ‘Architecture without an architect’. 

SI-CHAN PARK 

Park Si-Chan is known to take “identification photos” for architecture as the main subject of his practice. The artist presents both objective and subjective qualities in his photography by capturing the trace of an object’s presence and expressing shared socio-cultural likenesses. Through the surface of the architecture, his works evoke codified social structures and unsettled reasoning. 

INSTALLATION VIEW