Cryptographic Imagination (2016): Jongno, Seoul 

This was a series of five individual exhibitions, each titled with the name of the artist/s. The title, Cryptographic Imagination, sought to acknowledge that it can be difficult to understand each other, and our attempts to understand will often lead to imaginative interpretations. The artists were given briefs that required them to research the streets and neighbourhoods of Jongno 2-3ga (Fig. 35) and to create works in response to them. The aim was to explore the gap between art and non-art, and the theme provoked various nuanced responses and interpretations from the artists. 

1. Seoyoung Bae, Hyunji Lee, April 2016 [Exhibition] 

I invited Seoyoung Bae (who participated in the project 2015), and Hyunji Lee to participate in the first Cryptographic Imagination exhibition and this was the first time they worked together. The two artists did not meet or speak with one another before the installation period of the exhibition. Bae continued to use sheet iron for her sculptures (having been first being introduced to the material for her collaboration with the Daeryuk Steel Company the previous year). She also introduced the element of natural moss as a link between her hard, angular metal forms and the work of Lee, which was inspired by the sensations of walking through the alleys of Jongno 3-ga. Lee’s ceramic flowerpots contained ceramic plants and they were installed across the yard to naturally permeate the landscape of the place and within the gallery space, linking the exterior and interior and harmonizing with Bae’s juxtapositions of ironwork and moss (Figs. 36, 37). 

2. Chan Kyung Sung + Kiwan Sung, May 2016 [Exhibition] 

The exhibition included works made using the metal objects that the late poet Chan Kyung Sung (1930-2013) found on the streets, along with 103 one-syllable word poems from his collection Sun, and 18 poems from his Screw series (Figs. 38, 39, 40). Both art audiences and members of the local community could discover the late poet’s work tucked away in various corners of the neighbourhood, leading them to question which of the objects and scripts could be deemed ‘art’ and which were not (Figs. 41, 42). The late poet’s son, Kiwan Sung, also a poet and musician, selected the 103 poems from Sun at random and converted them into artificially digitized voices which played on speakers in and around the exhibition space under the title Poems without Footnotes (2016). The digital voices combined consonants and vowels from the late poet and his son’s voice recordings so that the voice of the father joined the voice of the son in a random reading of the 103 poems. Chan Kyung Sung was a poet who resuscitated discarded or dead words, and the exhibition provided an opportunity to look back upon his life-long accomplishment as a poet.79) I also attached his Screw poems to plasterboard walls—abandoned building materials found on the side of the road and which I erected in the alley, and I displayed his collection of one-syllable word poems on shop windows and signboards around the streets in Jongno (Figs. 39-43).

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79) Jongup Lim. (2016). Access available from www.sevennahalf.com. 

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80) https://www.sulki-min.com/wp/cryptographic-imagination-5/

3. Genevieve Chua, June – July 2016 [Exhibition] 

The Singaporean artist, Genevieve Chua, showed a collection of abstract conceptual artworks titled Vestigials and Halves. The works comprised stickers of typographic symbols and modular paintings (Fig. 45). Following the exhibition, some of the vinyl sheet stickers were attached to the wall of the alley between its shop signs, blurring the boundaries between the everyday marks and symbols of the streetscape and the artworks (Figs. 46-49). 

4. Sulki and Min, August – October 2016 [Exhibition] 

Graphic designers Sulki and Min’s site-specific work included images of pie charts, security patterns, and badges made using plastic and paper. The overall theme of the exhibition was visual exposure and concealment, and they sought to undermine the communicative potential of the various graphic symbols by eliminating the conventional clues needed to interpret them (Figs. 51-55).

5. Sunah Choi, October – November 2016 [Exhibition] 

The exhibition had three elements: 13 postcard-sized watercolour paintings which she posted to Seoul from Berlin (Fig. 56); murals (Figs. 57, 58, 59); photographs based on the principle of the Photogram (Figs. 59, 60). The colour combinations of the watercolour paintings serve as a code without any explanation. The possible loss or damage caused during the postal delivery was an essential element of the work. The abstract photographs Blue Print (2016) were made using the Cyanotype technique, with shadows created by placing objects directly on light sensitive paper and exposing them to light. Whereas photography is often understood as capturing reality, Choi pursued the potential of this camera-free photographic technique as a way of creating unique images. The technical constraints of the medium made her focus on the subject matter and through her attention to the negative spaces between ordinary things, she invented a fresh abstract design and pattern in reinterpretations of army camouflage patterns (Figs. 60, 61). 

Choi’s site-specific mural Wall Painting (2016) related to both the scale of the site of the exhibition and its originality of its structure: An old warehouse was painted white for use as a project space, and the concrete floor was exposed by ripping up floorboards. During this process of renovation, the foundation stone of an old ‘Hanok’ (a Korean traditional house) was found. Her mural work served as a conduit for connecting the present with the traces of the older structure. By these means she created a layering of space and time, bringing together ideas of the past and present, in a fusion of traditional and contemporary art forms. At the same time, the images highlighted the microscopic and macroscopic world, angles and scales, ideas of time and memory.