Art is the process of breaking down the boundaries of form and opening the doors to sensation.
BHANG Youngmoon's Solo Exhibition
@ 1019 Gallery&Lounge in Song-do, Incheon, S. Korea.
JAN 4 to 15, 2025
In her book <Against Interpretation>, Susan Sontag proposed a pivotal artistic attitude: to shift the way we experience art toward the sensory. I took this approach for my exhibition and it's deeply resonates with Olivier Messiaen's chromesthetic worldview. Messiaen viewed sound and color as part of an integrated system, believing that specific scales and colors could evoke equivalent sensory experiences.
This exhibition reinterprets Messiaen's philosophy of sensory integration in another context, creating a new artistic language that transcends the boundaries of sight and sound. Inspired by Messiaen's "limited transposition modes," the work focuses on the first mode and its transpositions a semitone higher, visually embodying the vibrant hues of a "sunburst" and the violet tones of the sky just after sunset. It aims to allow the viewer to experience the visually perceived as audibly tangible.
By capturing the rhythms of nature and adopting Messiaen's musical structures, the work explores new interactions between sight and sound, seeking methods for multi-sensory experiences. I want to reconstruct Messiaen's musical colors to portray the serene, transcendent moments of a sunset, enabling the audience to move beyond merely "seeing" the sunset of the West Coast of Korean Peninsula (Incheon area) to an immersive experience of "hearing and feeling" it. This creates the space (in this case, the exhibition place but it can be the inner world of people) for appreciating <OVER THERE>.
The most notable aspect of this exhibition is that the merging of forms and media does not dilute their unique characteristics. Instead, their formal properties are highlighted and placed in dialogue. In Sontag's philosophy, form lies at the heart of sensory experience. Through visual representations of color changes and light flows, and translating them into music, the exhibition offers a novel way to experience the resonance of color.
By moving beyond the interpretive approach Sontag criticized—the search for meaning—the exhibition provides the audience with an immediate sensory presence. The West Coast horizon is not merely a landscape but acts as a "pivot of sensory experience." Constantly shifting colors and the dynamic motion of light evoke a sense of vitality despite the horizon’s static nature. This integrated sensory moment becomes an "existential moment prior to interpretation."
The exhibition seeks to create a space where interpretation is unnecessary, a space of sensory fulfillment.
The static and dreamlike atmosphere of the horizon, as depicted in long-exposure photographs of the rippling waves during sunsets over the West Sea, combines with the modulated sounds of Messiaen's works. This interplay creates a sensory-immersive space for the audience.
A Journey to a World Deeper Than Interpreted Thought, Originating from Sensation
<OVER THERE> is an exhibition that transcends the boundaries of form and sensation by engaging with viewers through two axes: visual media and music. Within the interplay of light, color, waves, and horizon of the West Sea, the audience experiences a space that is simultaneously static and dynamic. The exhibition not only explores the integrated potential of sensation but also expands the boundaries of art, offering viewers a journey through the realm of sensory discovery.
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