REVIEW ARTICLES
Two Worlds
文 / 李維菁
The peculiar creatures Choe U-Ram makes are like the oldest fantastic beasts, born into the universe with man since the unknown past, yet they exist in a secret, parallel world. On one hand, they embody the myth in search for the origin of human desires; on the other hand, they bring about a newborn system signifying the apocalyptic prophecy of the future. Those moving sculptures, or the group of moving life forms, mix all the different qualities into one body; it is old and futuristic, primitive and sci-fi. They are the materialization of fantasy, yet they feel so real.
Choe U-Ram is an iconic artist in kinetic art in South Korea. He has demonstrated a profound accomplishment, as no one has seen in kinetic art, in his unique and insightful connection of art, science, nature and philosophy.
The turning point in Choe’s life is his individual exhibition at Mori Art Museum of Tokyo in 2006. Before that, Choe had spent many years in art, but it was very difficult for him, as his dedication was rarely well received. It was thus, when he was invited by Mori Art, he saw this exhibition as his last, thinking that he would stop making art should this exhibition didn’t work out. The title of the exhibition was City Energy, and it turned out to be the event that established the international reputation of Choe U-Ram; it also sufficiently conveyed Choe’s aesthetic style as well as the core message as an artist.
Choe U-Ram created a spectacular and fearsome mechanical organism; it looked like a singular massive creature, yet it looked also like a mass of life, gathered with thousands of life forms. It was called Urbanus. At the darkish exhibition site in Mori Art, hanging from the ceiling, the massive creature was composed of millions of small parts, continuously moving in complex ways, nonstop, extraordinary yet delicate.
Behind Urbanus was Choe’s imagination. He used to talk about him standing on top of the skyscraper where Mori Art is in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, looking out through the window into the night, and the entire city unfolded under his feet, with roads tightly woven like vines. The city looked like an enormous extensive organism to him. The myth of his imagination are the Urbanus nocturnal organisms, resting above the city, 200 meters from the ground; they would stay in secrecy and overlook Tokyo and its 13 million residents, but sometimes their traces can be found on the roof of the skyscrapers. They drift in the air, blinking with their breathing rhythm, their body folding and unfolding like a metallic flower. There are male and female Urbanuses; the male drifts and moves next to the female, and the female absorbs the energy of the city and transforms them into light. When the female discloses its blades, light and energy are released from her reproductive organs, which is when the male absorbs the energy released.
Choe’s creatures oversee the human city, and they are secretly reproducing, transmitting secret massages as if a hidden crisis is about to surface, or as if a message of nature desperate to send to human beings is about to come through. The messages of Choe U-Ram’s works is a reminder of all the metaphors mixed in Japanese Sci-fi anime: technological evolution, the city of monsters, the end of days, fear and darkness, and love and salvation. This exhibition earned Choe enormous critical acclaim and attention, and it had changed his career; immediately he was invited for a solo exhibition in New York, followed by presentations at multiple events like Liverpool Biennial, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and LEEUM. In 2017, he will present his solo exhibition in Singapore, Busan, and Taiwan’s National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Choe U-Ram creates the term Anima Machine to describe his works. Anima may indicate the soul, ghost, or life, and it can refer to motion. In his mind, all the mobile machines he makes are alive; they move, and they die. When he was little, he had no interest at all in anything that did not move, but he showed intense interest in science and engineering quite early in life. His grandfather was the researcher and inventor of Sibal, an early Korean car, and his grandmother was one of the earliest female taxi drivers in South Korea; she originally wanted to be a pilot, but because of the high level of difficulty, she turned to driving. Choe's grandparents’ company was close to the railway, and he would be so excited that he dragged his grandmother to listen to the rumbling train every time a train drove by. Choe’s parents were both artists. At a time when computers were rare, Choe’s father spent as much as twice his monthly wage to buy him a computer. A computer at that time used an 8-bit processor.
Choe’s fascination of science and the machines began as early as in his childhood. Due to the political tension between South Korea and North Korea of the time, the South Korean government usually issued military exercises. Choe would draw numerous portraits of robot and imagined them to be capable of protecting his families and friends. He was also affected by Japanese anime, which helped him to develop his own imagination of robots. When Choe’s dream to pursue science turned into the dream of pursuing art, he enrolled in the College of Arts at Chungang University, majoring in sculpture. In college he learned of artists like Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguley; inspired by their works, Choe became fascinated with kinetic art.
Even though he gave a solo exhibition by 1998, after college Choe almost gave up art for two to three years, simply because it was too difficult being a full-time artist. He went to work at a company producing educational robots particularly for children, making items and parts; luckily for him, Choe’s superior was supportive of him and gave him space to do his own research. In 2002, Choe received a 6-month fund from the government; he quit his job, rented a studio, and concentrated on his art. He told himself, if he could earn more for the rent he would continue on being an artist; if not, he would go back and work at a company. During that time, Choe held his own exhibitions and participated in other art shows, but the organizers rarely paid for his contributions. Choe was glad that he had the opportunity to display his works, but he grew more concerned and discouraged for the lack of economic support. Until DoArt gallery in South Korea invited Choe to exhibit at its opening show, although he was paid for his work, it actually cost him twice the money to complete, and the work was sold on the last day of the show. He was greatly encouraged, seeing that there were people who appreciated and would collect his works. Yet, after that he continued to struggle, to a point when he almost gave up. Choe's breakthrough came after receiving the opportunity to exhibit at Mori Art, and since then he emerged onto the horizon of the international art world.
Each of his Anima Machine works involves thousands of delicate parts, spectacular, splendid, complex, and precise, some of them resembling flower leaves and others are like scales or feathers. Choe invested enormous time and thought to design these moving creatures; he also worked closely with a team of engineers. It is remarkable to see how the way his mechanical organisms gather and continuously move, expressing his extraordinary interest in control theory. Control theory primarily studies the formation of manufactured or natural communication systems, including how the control and communication systems inside an animal are constituted, and how the automated control is engineered in a mechanical and manufacturing procedure. It involves fields like electronic technology, biology, neurosciences, and so on. Imagine a silent cluster of life forms. How do they gather, live together, and even communicate with no particular system of social command?
Choe’s Una Lumino, completed in 2008, is a 5-meter sculpture in the shape of a beehive, composed of hundreds of translucent flower-shaped white light. Una Lumino is like a community of message and life energy exchange; each flower moves independently, glowing as it unfolds and dimming upon closure, forming a series of continuous movement. The pattern of collective behavior works as if there is some nerve center for the flowers to connect and exchange messages with one another, which together comprise the cycle within a stable community. Choe used to speak of the barnacles, or similar crustaceans, epiphytic on the rocks by the sea. He marvels at how they protect themselves with their hard shell at the ebb, and how they open their shell at the rising tide to consume plankton with their tentacles. Those barnacles move freely, yet it is a fascinating mystery how they communicate with each other to decide a place to live together and to develop the practice of collective residence.
Choe U-Ram’s art underwent a visible shift by 2010. Before then, his Anima Machine consisted some mythological quality; the mythology here refers to its twofold connections with the ancient origin of human consciousness and a certain prophecy for the future. It is because of the ambiguity within his works of the time, where he invented the life of outlandish, bizarre creatures by employing mechanical engineering; yet, he also simulated the shapes and movements of organisms without discerning their shapes. There was thus the ambiguity to distinguish the ancient from the future or to tell goodwill from menace, and it was exactly this ambiguous space that created the imagination for enigmatic and multiple interpretations. However, since 2010, Choe’s works begin to draw directly from myths of the ancient time and religious stories, sometimes referring to symbols and sometimes speaking to social reality. Interestingly enough, since the connection to myths and symbols, the mythological qualities have reduced in Choe’s works, while their social metaphor as well as their reference to reality has increased.
Choe’s Cakra-2552-a is inspired by the Buddhist mandala, with arc-shaped metal parts and gears turning and consisting of a device in the form of a wheel. It looks like equipment with an exposed structure after its exterior is cracked open, and time seems to be decoded, allowing us to catch a glimpse of how time operates. On the other hand, Ouroboros of 2000 draws from the myth of the same name; famous in both the East and the West, this myth refers to a serpent eating its own tail, signifying life and death as one and the same in an eternal cycle.
Custos Cavum, a work made in 2011, is for Asia Society Museum in New York. The idea comes from Hindu Shiva, the god of creation and destruction destruction, referring simultaneously to the beginning and end of all things. In Choe’s mind, there were initially two worlds, connected with many tiny holes, as if the two worlds breathe with each other through those holes. But the holes may close any minute, so there has to be a guardian monitoring the holes, keeping them open to protect the two worlds from separation. Choe borrows from the shape of an Antarctic fur sea and the way they use their front teeth to drill holes in the ice as the inspiration for the guardian. In his story, when the guardian senses a row of holes newly formed on the border connecting the two worlds, new cells called Unicuses would break from the guardian’s body, fly elsewhere, fall to the ground and grow into new guardians to protect the newly formed holes. However, through time, people of the two worlds slowly forgot each other, and the guardian’s power fades; eventually, one after another the guardians die, and the holes connecting the two worlds will be closed forever. The story Choe sets for this work is very beautiful but sad; he writes, “Last night, I saw a Unicuses start to grow from the last bone of a Custos Cavum in my small garden. According to an old story, Unicuses will grow whenever the holes to the other world are open again.”
In contrast, Choe’s two works in 2012, Pavilion and Merry-Go-Round, engage more directly with issues like the decadence of modern society, vanity, and the worship of commodities and fames. Suddenly all the glitter, spectacle, splendor and exquisiteness turn into ghostly illusions.
This year, in stil laif, Choe U-Ram’s solo exhibition at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 33 art works from various periods of his career are on display, including some of the most representative ones. Choe will also present Ala Aureus, a new piece made specifically for this exhibition in Taiwan, transforming the beauty and rhythm of the Taiwanese butterfly into an art work. Choe U-Ram has always been fascinated with another world beyond our world or parallel to reality, mysterious unlike ours, yet beating with the same rhythm; and he aspires to understand and interpret that other world. Since the past century, this assumption, this thought of his, has been proved possible, in religion and psychology, metaphysically so, and in physics and astronomic sciences. As an artist, with his unique style and his imagination for the ancient and the futuristic, for art and science, the natural and the fictional, Choe U-Ram may very well be the Custos Cavum right where the two worlds connect.
