Seontae Hwang

Biography

Seontae Hwang presents “glass-photo” which has been gradually formed through his 10 years of living and working in Germany. The artist calls his “glass-photo” a “thinking space.” It is a kind of device in which it becomes possible to keep thinking by taking objects of thinking into it. By the way, what is it thinking? According to Vilem Flusser, a media thinker, “Thinking is something which keeps circulating spinning round in your head.” It is arranged in order by it being organized in the linear form of words.” Considered of its use, “glass-photo” seems to be what makes it possible to keep thinking rather than to arrange thinking in order. It is a device to stay in the circulating state of thinking rather than to get out of it. The “thinking space” is composed of a photo, glass, and wood. A piece of photo stands and a piece of milky glass stands at some distance from the photo. And the periphery between them is closed by wood. Each type is independent and refers to each other. For example, , an installation work from 2004, which studied the relationship between space and perception by changing the slope of a room 3 degrees can be seen as an extension of the “thinking space” to “a room of reality”. Also, “glass-book”, a three-dimensional glass sculpture created preparing for a group exhibition at the library of TU Berlin is repeated as a two dimensional “paper-book”, that is, in the form of photograph in the “thinking space”. The “thinking space” reveals a daily life. It is presented in the form of photos taken as an aspect of its. As a thing with a date, it is recorded and memorized by the artist and it is projected in imagination as an image of a time by viewers. It is a light thing. It is light as it is a moment placed on a thin paper with color. Taken from a particular viewpoint it is what flows away. As a daily life gains thickness through the medium of opacity of glass and closeness of wood, it loses its date. Now it becomes the object of thinking without a history. It is transformed into infinite days of repetitive daily lives and the viewers’ projection becomes stronger in the “thinking space.” Now it becomes heavy. Being in the “thinking space,” It can’t remain light. It becomes of heaviness with its eternally returning time and infinite eyes. The “thinking space” reminds us the old excitement which “they” would have felt playing moving images in a ‘’camera obscura.” It is play of images, not of things and it is play of simulacra, not of reality. Today the room has been reduced to the size of a camera but the excitement and enjoyment seems to be just as it was long ago. They are alive in the movement of fingers pushing every time every where. The “thinking space” is as much the space of play as the camera obscura is. It is of heaviness in which the time of eternal return and the eyes of infinity are repeated but it is of lightness in which images and simulacra dance.