News, Dear Mr. Ripley
KWON Hye-in
Curator, SeMA
News, Dear Mr. Ripley explores the issues and experiments on new ways of communication shared by the realm of art and the news media in an age when everything is commodified through network communication, and information could be created and shared by anyone through means of social media, and personal broadcasting.
The exhibition begins by examining the issues of post-truth such as fake news, a phenomenon driven by the flood of random and fragmented information saturating our online and mobile contents. As a result of such phenomenon, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to communicate and understand each other, to escape the traps of commodification, and to identify facts and truth from the rest.
In this context, the exhibition probes the issues on three different levels. First, it reflects on the conditions of our society and the systems of communication to examine how the so-called “news” are being fabricated and distributed. More specifically, this section of the exhibition reveals both the desire and crisis of the Korean society through works that appropriate the content and format of news broadcasting, as well as the online comment culture. Exploring images and contents that clash and collide with one another, the works portray the dark reality of how such fabricated contents are consumed in our society today.
Second, the exhibition broadly examines how the images are created, distributed, and ultimately alter our senses in the current media and communication environment. The works in this section demonstrate how the human desire to be recognized by others feeds into the bubble of social media and personal broadcasting. At the same time, they question whether images created by AI and other algorithms are in fact designed to reinforce agendas and prejudices advocated by certain groups. Some of the works in this section also reveal a spectacle of images filtered through our online and media setting, appropriated by artists in the form of paintings and prints.
Lastly, the exhibition looks into experiments on new ways of communication and the possibilities they present in the current age of post-truth. This section includes artworks which probe the issues such as human rights and the environment that arise from global political and military conflicts. They investigate the issues by incorporating methods of scientific research or reconstructing them in panoramic imagery. In both cases, the works collectively explore the boundaries of contemporary art and journalism to engage with the issues of our reality and to broaden the scope of our judgment. More importantly, they attempt to create social dialogue and inspire change.
In the sea of information that blinds us today, we must go back to the fundamental questions in order to communicate, understand each other, and to distinguish the facts and truth. We must ask ourselves how and what we will speak for. This exhibition hopes to provide an opportunity for the viewers to be inspired by the questions raised by the artworks and to open our eyes to a new horizon beyond the wall that surrounds us.
