Nicolas Bourriaud, an influential figure in the contemporary art discourse, observed that in response to the escalating perplexities of the global culture in the information age, contemporary artists are appropriating and programming mass-produced products, existing forms, and a world filled with traces of others, rather than composing new conventions.
A reflection of such phenomenon is the recent case of a painting Edmond Belamy, created by an AI fed with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted from the 14th century to the 20th century, and sold for $432,500 at New York Christie’s. As artists freely apply, recombine and reproduce everything in the world, even AI is also partaking in such acts of “inhabiting historicized styles and forms” and “using the image” as expressed by Bourriaud. It’s a world where everything is instantly produced, expanded, and consumed anywhere with ease.
In such context, The Expanded Manual began with the postulation that it might be a meaningful trend in contemporary art for artists to turn inwards and reference and reinvent their own works, rather than looking outwards. For this exhibition, the process of selecting the works took place with the most fundamental step of looking for sculptural and installation works from the museum collection which best suit the space at Nam-Seoul Museum of Art.
Works charged with elements of indeterminacy, incompletion and openness in terms of content and form were explored to allow new development, changes and advancement in the works. As a result, four artists Suki Seokyeong Kang, Minae Kim, Eunu Lee and Soyoung Chung were selected. Each of the artists observed their own works in the museum collection in detail again, applying them as the medium through which to produce additional works or structures and compose a new plan for the exhibition. As the existing installation manual of each of the works in the museum collection expands, the works are revived with even richer content and form, operating in the exhibition space in a brand new way.
