Exhibitions: 2019 Liquid-Crystal, Orbit
<L.C.O (Liquid-Crystal, Orbit)>
2019. 6. 25 - 7. 6
Gallery175
Artist: Song Da Seul, Ahn Sor yun, Hwang Hyo Duck
Curator: Choi You Eun
Imagine Narcissus, sinking into the quiet water, where even ripples and disturbances cease to exist, reflecting upon his own image. Narcissus, desiring to touch the beloved, extends his hand and recalls the entity that had been only an object of gaze for a long time, floating to the surface of his dreams. As he reaches out to touch the entity that has surfaced, believing he has possession of it, what remains in Narcissus's hand is a handful of water dispersed and vanished through his fingers. The moment of meeting and loss swiftly intersect, and the beloved, existing only momentarily as an "image," disappears amidst fluctuating ripples. With a single gesture from Narcissus, the water disperses in all directions, creating a vast disturbance. The entity, believed to exist alongside him, also vanishes with the waves, leaving behind concealed traces. In this moment, the image in the water disrupts the landscape of reality where he stands, and as he sinks into slumber, the echo transforming into stones and the nymphs that had surrounded him blur into remnants. The infinite immersion towards the beloved (in reality, himself) leads him to the landscape of his current existence, while the existence (actually a reflected version of himself) believed to be vividly present scatters away amidst the movements of waves.
The imagination of "Liquid-Crystal, Orbit" begins with the distortion reflected in the surface of matter, which embodies potential movements. Gaspar Bachelard proposes the reasoning of matter through the "reflective well," reflecting natural and external factors rather than focusing solely on the discourse about the image depicted on the reflecting object.
"If we consider Narcissus before the mirror, even if he strikes his forehead and fist against it and looks around himself, he finds nothing there. The mirror imprisons a hinterland that runs away from him, and there he can see himself, but he cannot catch himself; he can shrink, but he cannot expand; the world there is a fake distance that is narrower but cannot be surpassed. In contrast, the spring water is a wide-open path for him. Thus, the mirror of the spring water becomes an opportunity for the open imagination. Glass and mirrors give a stable image in strong light in the room. When comparing a mirror with living natural water and accepting the outdoor scene of a river, the mirror comes alive."[1]
Projecting an image onto a stationary state, much like the arrangement of molecules in a solid, allows for the creation of images at a steady rhythm and pace, capturing a part of the continuously changing world and allowing it to be observed stably. Conversely, the fluctuating surface of water and the arrangement of floating molecules reflect and capture the world's external movements and its pace, attempting to capture and escape at the same time. Within this, the "fixed" physical conditions momentarily appear and disappear, leaving behind traces and remnants in the flow without a specific direction.
Discovered by Austrian botanist Friedrich Richard Reinitzer in 1888, "Liquid-Crystal" refers to materials in a state between liquid and crystal. Carbon molecules in rod shapes change their arrangement depending on temperature: at room temperature, they are transparent as light passes through the molecules arranged in the same direction, but at a certain temperature, the molecules' arrangement changes, forming a liquid state where light cannot pass, appearing opaque. This principle is also applied in displays, where the state of molecular arrangement is controlled by an electromagnetic field to regulate the amount of light, serving as a medium for controlling light. The mechanism of molecules freely moving between liquid and solid states, allowing light to pass through and create images, recognizes the entirety of existence as fragments presupposing unstable motion. Elements composing reality constantly undergo vibrations and movements within cosmic time. Perhaps producing images only captures fragments of temporalities amidst continuous sensory stimuli, suggesting a process of translating consciousness into sensation within the continuum of numerous stimuli in reality.
The overlapping landscapes capturing partial changes and movements partially observed by the artist in Hae Sang Ahn's "Through the Open Right Eye" evoke the fluctuating psychological waves that Narcissus perceives from his immersion towards external intrusions. Moving between liquid and crystal, the artist attempts to construct a new reality through the realistic and vivid beauty, once again closing their eyes to the fluid motion of particles within the crystal. The newly constructed world manifests in "Through the Open Right Eye" as indeterminate and floating. Within each frame of the screen, fragmented forms appear and disappear repeatedly, drawn by moments of gaze and captured as imperfect images moving between liquid and crystal. The gestures of hands reaching towards the image and the landscape once again crushed imply the slipping caused by attempts to grasp the fixed state of changing subjects and the lag in perception.
Through this process of observation and crystallization, the artist moves beyond the closed cyclical structure of movement, towards imagination of the "narcissism of water," which appears and disappears through linear and circular movements. The circular movement of gazes between self and subject, and the linear movement creating gaps in time, give rise to an abstract dynamic of spiral motion.