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Twenty Shadows
Set Byul Li2011
Korean Art Museum Association
Seoul, South Korea
What we call ‘below’ is a place populated by things that are not allowed to exist in reality; therefore they have been suppressed. To rise to the surface they need tools for camouflage, such as the concepts that Sigmund Freud refers to as condensation and displacement, or Jacques Lacan’s notions of metaphor and metonymy. This is because, within the real world, they have been unable to build facades or give names that they can be identified with.
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Details
- Title: Twenty Shadows
- Creator: Li, Set Byul
- Creator Lifespan: 1970
- Creator Nationality: Korean
- Creator Birth Place: Gyeonggi-do, Korea
- Date Created: 2011
- Physical Dimensions: w1500 x h1830 cm
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Critic's Note: The artist collects certain types of articles from the Internet, newspaper and other media and rearranges them into a new scene on the canvas. The types of issues chosen are concerned with inhumane violence. As each image is presented devoid of its context, the unrelated images are composed into a complex scene that creates an uncanny feeling, which is familiar and at the same time strange. It brings together dramatic and magical situations. Li’s canvas is a space where an object’s gaze emerges as the subject’s perspective slips, as the subject’s fear is drawn to the surface by the flowing gelatinous lump. The dripping matter’s role is to hide the impulsive violence in the inner being of the artist, as well as to represent a reincarnation of fear. (By Choi Tae-man) The reality is composed of two endpoints in distinct phases. The first endpoint is nature that occurs during the night. The second endpoint is the night itself, where every object enters into a world of symbols in order to attain a particular meaning within a chain of signifiers. However, the symbols are far from perfect. The symbol has a hole, a passage of night, and it is “the objet petit,” as described in Jacques Lacan’s theories on desire. The objet petit is a signifier of absence and something unattainable. It is an enchanting flower that blooms brilliantly on the stage of fantasy. Therefore, Li’s flowers are located directly at the origin of the fantasy-obsessed gaze, in the eyes of her figures. Li’s exploration between the relationships of the surface and what lies below, the background and foreground and the subconscious and the conscious, are as meaningful as the search for an endpoint – or a disconnection – from the situation where human subjects are reduced to objects. Where there is a shift towards the fantastic worlds within.
- Artist's Education: Seoul National University. M.F.A., Painting.
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