Pssing Farthest

The work of KWAK Nam-sin (1953- ) never permits an easy, comfortable viewing. It always forces one to put up with uneasiness and to be alert and on the other hand always gives a breathing spell to the audience frustrated by it. Pissing Farthest (2002) is a painting depicting the shadow of a man pissing up into the air, and it can be said that the work is in the same spectrum of his “shadow” paintings made in the early 1980s. Vague graphite powder trails, which seem to be reflective of the past days of the artist, are replaced by industrial spray paint, and the decent images of natural objects are by a human figure standing in a rather mischievous pose. Nonetheless, there is no fundamental change in the fact that the riddles confronting the spectator are due to the absence of being. It is only that the way of exposing the absence has become more explicit and blunt.