‘Chan Kyung Sung + Kiwan Sung’ (May 8-June 4, 2016), the second exhibition of Project 7 1/2: Cryptographic Imagination, is the debut show of the poet Chan Kyung Sung (1930-2013). An indeed belated debut considering that it arrives at the age of 84 and three years after the poet has passed away.
Chan Kyung Sung’s artistic potential had already been demonstrated at the commemorative show titled Eungam-dong Orphanage of Objects (Baegak Art Space, February 25-March 9, 2016) which showcased the late poet’s works of junk art made of the odds and ends, especially pieces of metal, that he found here and there. Considering that Chan Kyung Sung was a poet who resuscitated life into discarded or dead words, the exhibition provided an opportunity to look back upon his life-long accomplishment as a poet.
In addition to Chan Kyung Sung’s junk art, the current exhibition features 103 poems from his collection of one-syllable word poems, Sun, and 18 poems from his Screw series. To this, the late poet’s son, Kiwan Sung, a poet himself, layers sounds that repeat themselves endlessly, made of the consonants and vowels that the latter extracted from voice recordings of his father and himself. In other words, the exhibition is a sort of a “father and son show,” mixing the father’s poems and junk art and the son’s sound art. So could this really be called a “debut show?” To answer that, please bear with me as I go back some 50 years.
Once again, it should be noted that Chan Kyung Sung was a poet. Since debuting in 1956, he dedicated his career to pursuing “Milhaek Poetry (Dense Core Poetry)”, a poetic theory that he established. “Milhaek” or the “dense core” refers to the original trait or character of an image; as such, the late poet believed that Milhaek Poetry could be realized by giving as much density as possible to words and adding as much weight as possible to expressions.
As long as glass exists as a bottle, it is a bottle./It is the hands and feet of Man./Only when it is broken can glass become glass.//A bottle is a function, a usage./It belongs to the plane of possession./It is given a price, bought and sold.//A chip, whatever it may be, is itself./Iron is iron, copper is copper, silver is silver./It belongs to the plane of existence. It is no-value.//Where is the Garden of Eden?/It is nowhere else than the place/where all things lie peacefully as they are.//Shattered chips gather such as a constellation of stars/and shine from the throne of dignity./It is the universe of the resplendent fragments. (Glass and Bottle)
This poem exemplifies 50 years of the late poet’s search to express the “essence and mystery of objects and existence” by using highly-dense and nonsuperfluous poetic language. “Elemental Poetry” is Milhaek Poetry in another name.
It’s elemental poetry./It’s a poem made of broken porcelain chips/that remain in the end after being smashed again and again./Someone says/”so elemental poetry is linked to minimalism.”/That makes sense./I don’t care how they call it./In an age where all embellishments are fake gold,/in an age where all words are bounced checks,/in an age where all living in seclusion is a show,/in an age where all things beautiful are strangled,/the only thing that shines without any beginning, end or color(無始無終無染)/are elements./For that, it’s elemental poetry. (Elemental Poetry)
In an age where all words are bounced checks and all things beautiful are strangled, what has no beginning, end or color (無始無終無染), in other words, what shines in the absolute, are verbs and nouns made of just two syllables (in Korean) devoid of any embellishment.
Eat/Sleep/Sleep/Eat//Wake up/Eat/Eat/Wake up//Leave/Eat/Return/Eat//Melt/Do/Do/Eat//Eat/Count/Compare/Earn//Earn/ Do/Spend/Eat//Sun rises/Eat/Sun sets/Eat//Eat/Do/ Do/Sleep//Eat/Rot/Rot/Leave (Eat)
Love/Wisdom/People/Dew/Heart/Oil/Breast/Tree/Chive/Salt/Wind/Village/Country/Autumn/Sound/World/Lightening/Pipe/Bowl/Tune/Joint/Thousand (Love)
If the poem Eat, comprising only verbs, tells the story of Man’s life from birth to death, Love, composed solely of nouns, deconstructs the narrative form altogether. The late poet likened the process to “showing the palette.” Rather than mixing different colors and painting with it only to end up with a murky mess, he opts to show the palette itself. The late poet pushes himself in his investigation of the “dense core,” and from two-syllables arrives at his one-syllable word poems (in Korean).
Sun/Moon/Star/Light/Night/Day/Earth/House/Water/Fire/Persimmon/Tongue/Strength/Sleep/Dream/Rice/Candle/Dung/Sap/Eyes/Spring/Mind/Talk/Road/Shed/Blood/Drink/Bow/Pine/Ball/Frame/Forest/Grass/Milk/Cord/Rain/Mulberry/Pheasant/Bone/Taffy/Brain/Line/Time/Sweat/Horse/Red bean/Stomach/End/Knife/Horn/Chisel/Gat (traditional Korean hat)/Neck/Body/Brush/Hand/Foot/Iron/Taste/Grace/Yut (Korean game)/Stone/Snow/Three/Ten/Ash/Dear/Soybean/Flaw/Belt/Nail/Rice paddy/Spirit/Cow/Island/Mouth/Meal/Rice cake/Soil/Honey/Mugwort/Joy/Room/Face/Fountain/Nose/Ear/Fence/Sprout/Back/Radish/Dike/Snake/Bear/Bee/Vine/Breath/Bud/Jing (gong)/Egg/Site/Flower/Bird (Sun)
The late poet’s pursuit of the ultimate drives him to the one-syllable word poems. Titles and texts are not of absolute necessity. An “absolute poem” where one single syllable acts as both the title and the text is also possible. The problem is, it loses the prerequisite element that makes a poem a poem. In other words, a poem reveals the essence of things, and to do so, it needs the structure of “A=B.” Chan Kyung Sung solves the contradiction by positioning text under A and space under B. In this light, it was in the late poet’s destiny to enter the borderland of art.
The current exhibition picks up at the point where the power had stopped to function with the passing away of the late poet. If he had lived longer, would he not have ended up doing the same eventually? Kiwan Sung deconstructs his father’s one-syllable poems into consonants and vowels then recombines them for his sound work, offering an interpretation of the cryptographic codes that his father left behind through his single-syllable words. Going from the stage of the molecule to that of the element. It would not have been easy nonetheless for the late poet, who had arrived at the one-syllable poems in his search for original and essential poetic diction, to move on to the stage of the element where poetic language loses all meaning. In this sense, Kiwan Sung’s work is at once a continuation of and a rupture from his father’s work.
When the late poet published his book of one-syllable word poems, he explained that the poems were accompanied by empty space. As such, when the reader opens the book, the text is printed in the upper left-hand corner of the left page, and a short footnote is provided on the lower right-hand side of the right page for each poem. Curator Sunyoung Oh imagined how the late poet would have gone about his debut show. She had the one-syllable word “Moon” imprinted on to the upper left corner of one of the walls of the exhibition space. Opposite from the word on the ground, she placed a work of the late poet made of two four-cylinder engines juxtaposed horizontally one against the other. The late poet never gave any titles to his work, so the choice was no doubt the curator. The eight holes at eye level, evocative of the changes of the moon throughout its cycle, correspond with the “Moon” on the wall. At this point, Chan Kyung Sung’s junk art turns into installation work, and the late poet, who had remained in the borderland of art, is born again as an installation artist. Thus the term “debut show.”
The poems go beyond the confines of the exhibition space to invade the walls and grounds of the surrounding back alleys. “Face” on the mirror, “fountain” above the water faucet, “soil” on the cement wall, “room” next to the door and window frames, “breath” next to a torn rooftop letting in a ray of sunlight, “bee” next to the small flower bed, “sprout” next to an old well, “site” on the corner of a building, “ear” on top of a telecommunications cable, “joy” next to the broken guitar in a store inside an arcade… The poems that have been carefully placed in their spots melt into their environs of signposts, billboards, doorplates, non-smoking and for rent stickers and safety signs. The exhibition takes a step from the borderland between poetry and art into the world of art, and arrives at the fundamental question: what is art? Maybe a natural outcome considering that the late poet spent his lifetime questioning what poetry was. However, it would be more just to say that it is curator Oh who has borrowed the voice of the late poet. Must artworks only be hung inside the white cube of art museums and galleries? Must they be sold at a high price to be considered worthwhile?
A small corner of the traditional hanok in Jangsa-dong, Jongno, a building that houses the office of the Song Bock Eun Foundation, serves as the exhibition space. The neighborhood, along with Sewoon Arcade, was the cradle of Korea’s information technology industry. Before that, it was a hinterland of American military bases where people sold and bought parts of used military vehicles and eventually saw the birth of “Sibal Taxi,” Korea’s first locally-made car. This may explain the sporadic presence of mechanical parts stores in between those selling electric and electronic parts. The 18 poems of the late poet’s Screw series, which the visitor may find under the roof of the hanok building, on the window, or on the glass pane at the entrance, take on a new meaning in this place. The Screw series, which was awarded the Korean Modern Poet Association Prize in 1979, was the poetic and philosophical foundation of the late poet’s Orphanage of Found Objects.
Screw that erects a door by linking fragments. You are the end. There is no screw to link you again. Both tricycle and Viking No. 1 become a unit thanks to you. A simple yet profound principle of combination. Oh orphan screw that has been cast away on the ground. Number cp1038 on a bygone list. A shard of iron with a lump for grooves. I will transform you today. I will give you a new life as an object. May you now enter the realm of the mind. You are now a prince. Mock the civilization that was erected thanks to you, the civilization that used then cast you away. Oh, screw. My piece of gold. (Screw 2)