Bae Namhan. ⓒBae Namhan

The world presented by Bae Namhan is a virtual one that mixes the past and the present, and the oriental and the occidental. Although it is not referred to as media art, it presents a story far beyond that dimension. Numerous images on the big screen are elements that have been mobilized to create new frameworks from the original. He uses a photocopier to create countless reiterations of the same image, then puts them together into a singular panel. Bae's works have always been the fetus and the cosmonaut. The fetus is an icon of the primordial existence predating civilization, while the cosmonaut is an icon of our future existence empowered by the advancement of science. On the axes of those two key concepts, Bae Namhan draws in images selected from magazines, newspapers, and books, synthesizing them. This type of collage is his main means of creation. The collage is a commonly used malerisch expression, prominently utilized by Cubists and Picasso to Dadaists and surrealists. Perhaps Bae Namhan chose this common collage technique as a commentary on the present events surrounding him. And what is that exactly?

Bae Namhan, 〈There and there〉, 2018. Mixed media, 122x122cm. ⓒBae Namhan

His works are best introduced with a prelude on his current status. Understanding an artist's current context is key to understanding an artist's creative environment. Without that consideration, any analysis or understanding is on weak foundations at best. Understanding an artist's creative condition precedes all else.

When the artist moved to his current studio in Yangpyeong, he also moved a full truckload of full-size cardboard panels. He stacked the entire truckload of those hardboards by the wall of his studio and used them as material in his works. At the moment, he has used nearly all of the hardboards that he brought. His creative activities have been intense, to say the least. Another thing he brought with him was a full set of science encyclopedia. Over the past decade, the artist perused through the entirety of the volumes while also collecting and scrapping scenes that he liked from various magazines and books. It was not always that way. When I first visited his studio more than a decade ago, Bae Namhan was an artist focused on combining various objects he found around him, unto the canvas. He began his work in the mid-seventies, around the time conceptual art was in vogue, and he was deep into conceptually analyzing objet. His works reflected this interest. With that conceptual approach, his works also featured traits of drawing methodologies that had become popular with the Korean painting circles in the early 1980s. I too, had been an artist in that period, and could empathize with the ongoings of his world in that period. Bae was in his 60s at the time, and he was looking to turn a new corner, pivoting on decades of experience in the painting circle.

Bae Namhan, 〈There and there〉, 2018. Mixed media, 122x122cm. ⓒBae Namhan

The artist's studio building was a single-story slab-wall structure. The artist had splayed out hardboards on areas of the accessible roof, as beds to objets of various shapes and sizes. Twigs lay on some, while others had drawings on them. Some had been marked by pencil, industrial lacquer spray, calligraphy ink, or oil-based ink-markers that all bore the idiosyncratic style of Bae Namhan. The studios had a similar situation going on. He had stacked all his works on one side of the room to the wall, clearing the remaining space to his works of complete disarray. The sight was truly a metaphor of lotus blossoms put forth from the murkiest waters. Bae Namhan was completely immersed in his creation, his gaze flashing to and fro, from the present to the past, reaching for moments to add to his work. Despite the sequestered studio and his singular interest in creating his works, the gleam in his gaze gave away a cosmopolitan awareness.

※ This content was first published in the April, 2019 release of Public Art Magazine and has been re-published on TheARTRO.kr after a negotiation was reached between Korea Arts Management Service and Public Art Magazine.

Yoon Jin-sup / Professor of Honam University

Yoon Jin-sup graduated from the painting department of the Hongik University College of Fine Arts and earned a master's degree in literature from the same university's department of aesthetics. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Sydney in Australia. During his undergraduate years in the mid-1970s, he worked with the avant garde group S.T producing experimental work in painting, three-dimensional art, installations, and performance art. Since being selected at the 1990 Dong-A Ilbo spring competition with a piece called "Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Selavy?" he has also been involved in criticism and exhibition planning.

He has planned some 70 exhibitions in Korea and overseas, including A Cross-Section of Korean and Japanese Contemporary Art (featured at the 3^rd Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Museum of Art), Spatial Rebellion: Korean Three-Dimensionality, Installations, and Performance 1967--1995 (Seoul Museum of Art), Virtual Boundaries: Korean and Chinese Media Art Today (Han Ji Yun Contemporary Space, Beijing), and Korean Monochrome Painting/Dansaekhwa (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea). He has also served as curator for the first and third Gwangju Biennale events, commissioners for the 50^th Sao Paulo Biennial and Triennale-India (2004), director of exhibitions for the 3rd Seoul International Media Art Biennale, and chairman of the Korean Art Critics' Association. He currently serves as vice chairman of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), a professor at Honam University, and a honorary professor at the University of Sydney.