<Mirror Image : About a Self-Portrait> is an exhibition looking into a variety of aspects and meaning of self-portrait that has been changed with the conventional way of photography using a mirror and the development of media. 'Mirror' as a motive makes it to analogize a new world with imitating the original and to look back not only to the exterior but interior. It illuminates the relationship and meaning between the artist, his/her self, and their works expressing the self.
When we reflect an existence and aspect, we often call it a 'mirror image.' This is because within the ambivalence of the mirrored image including the reflection as what it is and that of the right side to the left, the self-reflection and agony can be driven.According to Jacques Lacan, mirror is an object that makes it possible to realize self as a subject. There was a moment that human was called 'Homo Speculum,' and the word 'Speculum,' meaning 'mirror' in Latin, is the origin of 'speculation.' Likewise the existence of mirror, reflecting an image itself and its inner side, are applied as the important motives that show the artist's inner sight through the subject, self-portrait.
Self-portrait, a genre of portrait, is created by a painter with regarding 'self' as an object for representation. Since 'portray' is originated from the Latin word 'protrahere,' meaning 'to discover' and 'to draw,' self-portrait is beyond drawing a self image; it is to discover another self and to draw the inner self. Thus, we can read manifold inner thoughts through the self-portrait such as the artist's mental state, self-affection, self-display, self-identification, and self-pity.
For artists representing their own views of looking at the world through their works, the thought and agony about self can surely be a significant proposition. The inner nature and anguish about identity are the subjects of speculation as the most fundamental proposition for a work of art. Self-portrait, one of those to reflect it in the most direct way, has been constantly studied with a variety of subjects and methods in the East and West. The acknowledgement of panting self-image began from the Renaissance when the concept of artist and signature on works of art started. The conventional self-portrait was the drawing of the reflected self-image on a mirror, and after the development of photography, there became a new type of describing it by capturing a moment. Nowadays, due to the advent of digital camera, self has had a role as an available object by self-capturing methods, and it is possible to capture and express a different dimension of self-mage from the one captured by others or by using a tripod. Moreover, the methods of synthesizing self with another self-image, or disguising it have been reached by the development of different media in order to create a new self, and some artists often apply a completely different object into their self-image to symbolize their psychological states.
The main feature of this exhibition is to look into the aspects of self-portrait created by Korean artists after the modern age and their inner meanings. It consists of two sections ;<Microcosmos in a face>, a collection of works of self-portrait as a mirror image reflecting a face as it is, <Inner mirror, a mask image>, showing the distorted and refracted characteristics of mirror as a 'mask image.' This exhibition has an attempt to look through the works of modern to contemporary artists and to look deeply into what 'self' is for artists, what inspiration they could give and from what inspiration they could create their self-portraits, and how it is expressed and understood inside their works. Thus, it is aimed to offer the opportunity to ask again the meaning of the 'artist him/herself' as a subject matter, to consider the diverse changing aspects of expressing identity, and to speculate on the images of contemporary artists and ourselves.