Sung Neung-kyung (b. 1944) graduated from the Department of Painting at Hongik University before starting his career as a member of the avant-garde art group Space and Time, S.T., in the early 1970s. He began to garner attention with his work, “Newspapers: After the 1st of June 1974” that was exhibited at the 3rd S.T. Group exhibition in 1974, and has presented performance art using mediums such as newspapers and pictures as well as ordinary acts ever since. Aside from his artistic activities, Sung once taught students at the Kaywon High School of Arts.
Sung Neung-kyung’s works can roughly be divided into two categories: experimental events and satirizing statements on reality from his early days, and the exaggeration of daily routines from the 1990s onwards. In Sung’s early works when he was involved in the activities of the avant-garde art group Space and Time, S.T., he occasionally presented logical events utilizing the body along with his fellow members, yet his major work from that time are his newspaper performances, in which he read aloud a chosen newspaper article, then cut it out and displayed the remaining cut-out frame or alternatively cut a newspaper into pieces with same size and rearranged them, thereby criticizing, if indirectly, the then-reality under the oppressive Yushin regime which imposed strict control and censorship on the press. His critical attitude towards society led to the creation of “Irrelevant to Specific Person” (1977) and “Scene” (1985), in which he suggested another opportunity to the newspaper images by exhibiting photos of politicians or celebrities with their eyes covered with tape. As a resistance to both refinement and the prevailing art circles that favored Dansaekhwa, Korean monochrome painting, Sung cut and exhibited the catalogue of the 5th Ecole de Seoul as well. Through his other works including “Mr. S’s Decedents,” “Spoiled Photographs Are More Beautiful,” and “Half of Mr. S’s Life,” Sung experimented with collage of an avant-garde and impromptu variation by bringing his daily life into the public space of the exhibition hall or by going out to the streets with a bag that contained a variety of small objects such as an umbrella, fan, razor, hula hoop, or slingshot and attempted to interact with viewers with exaggerated gestures like those of a peddler at a marketplace. Sung Neung-kyung’s works have been acknowledged as examples of advanced experimental art that boldly satires society and attempts to blur the boundary between art and daily life with humor.
