The Poetic Collection explores the correlation between contemporary art and “the poetic” through the collections in Seoul Museum of Art. Here, “poetic” signifies the attributes of poetry that traverse in and out of the literary genre. Poetry generally begins with a new perception, and an approach that puts a break on our automatic, conventional way of thinking, rendering an “unfamiliar” experiences of known subjects. The impetus for this exhibition came from the realization that the characteristics of poetry are often compared to those of art. Poetry has always been an infinite source of creative inspiration for artists. It is not easy to find a simple answer to an epistemological question like “what is poetry?” or “what does poetic mean?” Such concepts are expanding, transforming and reconstituting as flexibly and frequently as is contemporary art. This exhibition displays some of the 5,654 works gathered in the art museum's current collection, examining the various forms and developments of art and exploring the similar and disparate characteristics between poetry and art. The exhibition focuses on the elements of the speaker, the confessional personality, and the linguistic aspects that are unique to poetry, and is composed of three sections: The Speaker, (Record of) Confession, and Poetry and Art.
The Speaker sheds light on the one who speaks. In poetry, a manifestation of words, there is always the speaker, who may or may not be the poet himself or herself. The poet sometimes conceals themselves, introducing a substitute or persona to represent their voice. In the same way, an artist may present themselves directly in their work but can also speak through new figures of their creation. The presence of the speaker can not only be erased or transformed at times within the stage the artist has constructed, but the speaker can also take a non-human form or many forms for that matter. The poet turns their image into a poetic subject and draws an analogy to painting, as exemplified in the famous Yoon Dong-ju poem Self-Portrait, and many other poems that are composed under the title “self-portrait.”
(Record of) Confession explores the introspective, sometimes confessional, nature of poetry. One of the multiple reasons that many people can identify themselves with poetry is because it shares the poet’s inner experiences and emotions with the listener/reader. The process leading up to the confession is never easy, because the speaker must constantly confront memories of the past, recognize the present, and go through a process of reflection and purification. The ways in which the artist reveals oneself and conveys their personal experiences and thoughts to the audience are still effective and meaningful in the realm of art. The exhibited works explore the subjects of love and identity, and communicate with the audience by revealing the artists’ attitude and experience of life.
Lastly, Poetry and Art approaches the linguistic and structural aspects of poetry, and looks at visual language within art works from multiple angles. The language of poetry conveys a sense of “ambiguity” in that a poem can be interpreted in multiple ways, and paradoxically, this comes from the fact that the language of poetry is very specific. Similarly, the formative elements used by artists take on individual specificity, but they aim for implied meaning, sometimes going against logic and making poetic leaps. The common features of poetry, such as metaphor, symbolism, allegory, rhythm, poetic imagination and lyricism are also elements often found in works of art. Experimenting with the possibilities and limitations of visual art, artists articulate their own formative language in the exhibited works, which is sometimes not easy to decode or causes various semantic effects.
The exhibited works are organized under separate categories but are not segmented, because narratives are articulated through the borrowed lips of the speaker, and the way it is done is often unveiled under ambiguous or metaphorical visual language. The boundaries and categories in art are becoming gradually vague today, and different disciplines overlap and interact with each other, making crossovers and exchanges. SeMA hopes that this exhibition will shed new light on contemporary art and poetry, and offer an opportunity to rediscover and reinvent the meaning of the displayed works.
