Tuesday, March 31, 2009

"You're wearing a size too small"

I tried to see two exhibits today but was only able to find one of the galleries. I got close to the other one, but it was so cold and I was so sleepy that I gave up quickly and rushed home instead, desperate for a nap. This is a piece by Jihyun Lee called "009FE2401 Dreaming Books" and the medium is "Books - Pluck off."

This was on the same floor as the one before, at Gallery Hyundai. The exhibit title is translated badly, to "Great Hands," but you get the idea. The pieces were quite typical of Korean contemporary art, in that they are composed of a nearly unfathomable sum of tiny parts, and wildly labor intensive. This one is a detail of what looks like traditional landscape paintings, but are actually pen and rubber stamps on mulberry paper, by Seungho Yoo. Of course I loved them b/c they're all language - Korean characters that create images.

I was supposed to meet with a professor leading a government-funded hanji project today, but he wasn't able to make the date, so I had lunch and tea with B.K. Kim from FIDES, and got a lot of good information. It was sad info, but important to know, about the current state of hanji and its makers.

After my nap, I somehow managed to get myself out the door to meet Stephanie for dinner. We had Korean comfort food (rice porridge) and then gorged ourselves on a waffle/ice cream dessert. She and I are the only Fulbrighters crazy enough to have signed up for the Korean language proficiency test in a few weeks, but I guess it would make sense; we were talking about the hotness level of people based on their grasp of grammar. She also told me that in Korea, there's no spring fever, but more of a spring malaise. This helps me understand my current slump. But at least small things still excite me: I got new mechanical pencils today so that I can use my new 0.7mm colored lead.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Pencils of the mechanical subcategory: good for inscribing lines with much precision and the engagement of tiny buttons.

(Ok, I was shooting for an abstruse-yet-technically-grammaticaly-correct-sentence... trying... to be... um... funny!)

theorist said...

"Korean characters that create images" - right up my alley!