On the event of the beautiful and deeply private new physique of labor, Castaway, created by Ho Jae Kim, we’re excited to share some phrases that Kim wrote in regards to the work. Introduced concurrently at Harper’s in NYC and now Gana Artwork in Seoul (the latter opening on August twenty second), the meditative works communicate to a dialog about creation in isolation, as Kim notes, “the profession of an artist fosters the form of psychic alienation invoked by an uninhabited island.” Please learn his phrases, beneath. —Evan Pricco
Castaway
The story of Solid Away (2000), directed by Robert Zemeckis, follows Chuck, a person abandoned on an island after an airplane crash. Solid Away is beloved for its dramatic depiction of Chuck’s misfortunes, delirium, and strategies of survival on the island. Once I rewatched the film as an rising artist, I felt a peculiar sense of empathy with Chuck’s isolation and experiences on the island. Earlier than my first solo exhibition with Harper’s in New York, my dream of being a full-time painter felt like an not possible dream. I used to be really alone with my work in my studio–my very own abandoned island. I longed for somebody to go to my studio and acknowledge that my work and I exist.
Solid Away turned a visible metaphor for my nuanced expertise within the studio, one which different working artists may additionally relate to. In my new physique of labor, Castaway, I exploit the movie’s atmosphere, props, and themes as some extent of departure. Castaway contains 27 new work, constructing a tropical world to interrogate themes of solitude and the artist’s psyche. This new collection is a pastiche of motifs from varied tales of islands and grand voyages, akin to Lord of the Flies, Gulliver’s Travels, and Moby Dick, and pictures drawn from Christianity.
In Solid Away, Chuck creates Wilson, a personified volleyball, who serves as a pal and confidant on the island. Wilson turns into Chuck’s refuge from loneliness with whom he shares his accomplishments, despair, love, and ambition. Legendary Island (2024) depicts Chuck holding Wilson in a pose harking back to Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be, or to not be.” Wilson’s bloody crimson face, impressed by the Shroud of Turin, drips to the sand beneath. Like a reliquary object, imbued with the life and physique of Christ, Wilson is delivered to life by Chuck’s bloodied handprint.
Wilson turns into the bodily manifestation of Chuck’s psyche and an extension of the person’s blood and physique. Chuck’s exchanges with Wilson blur the boundaries between inside dialogues and exterior conversations. Within the artists’ exile, they create Wilsons, or artworks, bodily manifestations of the artists’ historical past, philosophy, wishes, and experiences. Just like the dualistic nature of Chuck’s conversations with Wilson, the art-making course of is each an exterior train and an inside wrestle.
Studio Island (2024) references Chuck’s tried suicide. In Solid Away, this existential scene conveys true despair when all hope appears misplaced. Chuck survives his suicidal try, which results in a second of self-recollection and his determination to try his escape from the abandoned island. The pursuit of ardour and goals exists between hope and despair. All artists want to be rescued not directly or kind. To some, rescue can come within the type of exhibitions and recognition. To others, breaking one’s plateau or discovering one’s true function can supply peace. Though we castaways in the end lengthy for rescue, there’s a stunning nuance that ties us to our abandoned islands, or our studio practices. Regardless of the solitude and hardships intertwined with exile and survival, the studio additionally offers an area for magnificence and function. The island is a legendary area the place magnificence and anxiousness coexist in a perpetual dance.
Purgatory, Representing My Actuality
My work deal with the concepts of the in-between, the mundane, and the liminal. I name them purgatories. Past the spiritual, there are various purgatories in our up to date lives once we are neither right here nor there however someplace. Whether or not it’s looking for one’s id, sitting on an extended flight between international locations, or strolling underneath countless scaffolds and building websites in New York, we exist in and round indeterminate states.
I’m now lucky to maintain myself as a painter and make each day connections with my inventive ardour. Nevertheless, I nonetheless keep in mind the years when folks recognized me not as an artist, however because the a number of skins I wore as a restaurant supervisor, bar director, tutor, and membership promoter. For a few years, I confronted the indeterminacy of striving and longing. Utilizing the theme of purgatory, I can signify the human expertise of transience, mundanity, and self-realization in a fantastical approach.
In my works, I create imaginary areas and worlds lit fully from behind. My viewers are pressured to look into the extraordinary mild and the silhouetted figures and environments forward of them. The sunshine and shadow reference Plato’s allegory of the cave, the place the cave prisoner’s actuality is just composed of shadows, by no means the true object or mild that exists outdoors of the cave. I prolong the imagined house deep into the image aircraft and place my viewers in direct view of the monumental objects and light-weight forward. I hope to supply my audiences with the choice to hunt the reality that exists past the shadows.
Thoughts Palace (2024) exhibits a determine standing on turbulent waters, wanting forward into the sunshine. The determine endeavors to remain afloat and look into the sunshine, and the portray’s composition references Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Thoughts Palace is an extension of Friedrich’s romanticism, merging man’s internal psychology with the elegant and breathtaking pure world.
Maybe actuality exists past human comprehension and we are going to by no means be capable to totally grasp its true nature. Nevertheless, there may be magnificence to this impossibility. Our incapability to grasp the whole lot on this planet permits us to constantly search and marvel in regards to the world round us. Humanity’s concern of the unknown could encourage us to simplify the world into bite-sized truths the place we will stay complacent, however that is at the price of denying potential discoveries. If we permit ourselves to be bewildered by the sunshine of the rising solar or the starry cosmos, we develop into part of the higher world, filled with its mysteries and potential for exploration. —Ho Jae Kim, 2024