Aesthetics of Abundant Boundary(Skin)
Jung Kwangho's works in 1980's and early 1990's had prominent concerns on relationship of painting and sculpture, of fine arts and everyday affairs. The problem of relations between two dimensional, three dimensional, usual object, and art object was his work's main theme, whether to spread on the ground such every material as a kettle, a water dipper made of a gourd, a pair of scissors, a bottle opener, a shovel, a weeding hoe, or to attach them to a modernist artist's posters, or to turn a cube of Donald Judd into a plane gift box, or to turn the metallic plate of Karl Andre into a cracker. During this process, he firmly established his viewpoint on the trend of serial western artworks in latter half of the 20th century such as modernist painting, minimalism, conceptual artwork, Neodada and named them 'removableness according to ready-made arts.' His 'reasonableness according to ready-made arts' indicates that "fine arts will hardly achieve their intended purpose without relying on the existing arts" and it comprises core of his theory on 'Non-sculptural sculpture.' In this context, it is understandable that he broadly enlarged the region of non-sculptural sculpture into the ordinary world, insisting that "The place where sculpture can build his house is not some isolated place but the place in the territory of non-sculpture" at the preface for an exhibition held at Noksaek Gallery in 1994.
'Everyday world' presented by such ordinary objects as kettle, shovel, crab, gourd dipper, seemed to gain its concreteness from those works that put the object on the table composed of transparent acryl plate or hang national flag composed of transparent vinyl. Transparency of the material made it possible for the 'non-sculptural sculpture' to be viewed not only as the things but also on the viewpoint of space and time which is the precondition of their existence by lessening sensation of masses and weight that is the physical condition of sculpture. The concept of 'non-sculptural sculpture' explained in an interview with the 'Space' in 1997 well reflects these change.
When a sculpture has connection with all situations outside itself, with space and time, then all circumferential things may be called non-sculptural sculpture... Non-sculptural sculpture could be the expression of self-affirmation and at the same time self-negation.
His "simultaneous expression of the self-affirmation and self-negation being experienced as sculpture makes contact with the world of non-sculptural sculpture is the sculpture composed of surface(skin) only. According to his expression, his work of a leaf and jar made by soldering copper cable one by one consists of such skin that is piercing through between a plane and a solid body, or is made of Deleuze's skin of body without organs, in which the plane and solid body churn each other. If we understand the Deleuze's skin of body without organs' as the state of pure potential with no organs attached, and as a genuine flow of potential energy itself, his copper cable works, after all, can be referred to as being existent on the borders of sculpture and painting, of two dimensions and three dimensions, and of reality and image as a flow of potential energy.
In fact, his copper cable works hang on the wall or lain on the ground give the impression deficient of mass which is the condition of sculpture. Moreover, copper cable reflecting the light of exhibition space loses the materiality here and there, instead, shows itself by the dark shadow drawn on the wall or on the ground. This aspect of "piercing the plane and solid body"is confirmed by the shape of continuous intersection between thickness and thinness, enlargement and contraction, order and disorder, heaviness and lightness according to spectators' location in that space. Consequently, his non-sculptural sculpture is located in between the borders of painting and sculpture, existence and non-existence without having fixed structure or overall forms. This is the reason that he says "What I have been trying to make up to now is neither things nor images, but they are not apart from things and images. If I am unavoidably to speak about my work, there is no other way but to narrowing and approaching between the image and things." It is fortunate that Jung Kwangho feels that the space of boundary is not the space of futility or meaninglessness, but the one of unlimited potential and vitality.
Moojeong Jung (Professor of Duksung Women's Univ., Art Critic)