Photography and Media: 4 AM
Photography and Media: 4 AM is a photography exhibition curated by the Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA) as part of the Festival of Photography in Museums co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Arts Council Korea. It will be held at four public art museums in Seoul, Daejeon, Gyeongnam, Gwangju under different themes.
The exhibition is trying to portray multiple identities of people navigating in an increasingly complex media environment today. This includes works by photographers (Koo Sang Mo, Chanmin Park, Seung Woo Back, Seo Yeoung Won, Taewon Jang, Heeseung Chung, Han Sungpil); by video and installation artists employing photography (Youngmin Kang, Moonho Lee, Lee Sang Hyun, Cho Yikyung, Ha Tae-Bum); by a photojournalist (Park Jongkeun); and a participatory video installation work composed of photos people uploaded on SNS(Cha Ji-ryang).
'4 AM' in the subtitle is derived from the short novel "Mapping in Darkroom", which was published by Lee Sang, a Korean writer, in 1932 under his pen-name Bigu. In the story, '4 AM' is the moment when the main character meets his other self - Lee Sang- when he goes to bed at 4 am. Thus, the subtitle “4 AM” does not necessarily mean time but a metaphor of “a new dimensional space.” Falling half asleep, Lee Sang goes to the movies, to a zoo and to a restroom as he walks around between time and space without knowing whether it is a real or imaginary world. It is as if he is spending a whole day on an imaginary map.
Media images, which directly reflect lives of people in the present times, are parallel to “light in the night,” as well as to “the self” which plays multiple roles within the media environment. In 1932, Lee Sang sleeps with the fluorescent light on until the early morning. In 2014, people check in their Facebook or play music videos on YouTube, or look at photos on Instagram and Twitter with the light off in a dark room as if they rummage through their Smartphones. "Mapping the Darkroom" or an imaginary map, which Lee Sang drew while sleeping, has become our reality today.
We now live in a new world where the virtual and real, the genuine and fake, you and I co-exist in space and time, and where intermixed images and texts have a existential value in society. People often experience a mixed feeling of isolation and solidarity at the same time as they wade through this disorderly space. Photography and Media: 4 AM attempts to offer viewers time to think about the uncertainty of the self, memory, scenery and floating images and information which cannot be clearly defined or in a state that any definition is no longer meaningful.
***Artist Talks at Exhibition Hall***
2014. Mar. 4. Tue. 7pm : Youngmin Kang (Participating Artist)
2014. Mar. 18. Tue. 7pm : Seung Woo Back (Participating Artist)
