2020 Emerging Artists & Curators

The Journey of Eternity 

The Great Commission presents its third live exhibition series The Journey of Eternity, featuring the ‘space of formative imagination’ where real and imaginary times coexist, presented in one dramatic production through a hybrid genre of music, performance, and visual art.

The “time” as spoken of in The Journey of Eternity possesses a body. This body of time is water that has a shape but cannot be touched, symbolizing a “flow.” The imaginary story of this passage of time swimming like a regular clock and then unpredictably reversing its direction can be thought of concerning the daily accidents we experience in our lives.

However, those unpredictable events that compose our day fill our lifetime with complex emotions that cannot be explained through a usual conception of time, with the relationships that form upon sharing those emotions and with the regret, trauma, retrospection, and enlightenment caused by such relationships. Therefore, they go beyond the realm of our time to influence our emotions and encourage a creative imagination about what is ultimately spiritual.

Based on this worldview of imagination, The Journey of Eternity seeks to introduce “exhibition as an experience,” where the audience can immerse themselves in emotions beyond what can be seen or heard and reflect upon their memories in hope.

Full-live Performance: 6. 2, 13, 20, 7-8PM

Public Program 6.10, 12, 17, 6-7 PM 

Improvisation Performance  6.6, 9, 12-4 PM  Live Performance due to the exhibition hours

Online Booking https://forms.gle/xzUH3Z8BFqF23Vt18   

STAGE 1 Frame City | The Structure of Time

Kyung Hwa Shon, in her film and variable-dimension installation work <Every Second in Between>, explores how formative structures can themselves become a narrative. Famous for being home to the BBC Studios, the White City area used to be where national exhibition events of the British Empire took place, as well as where immigrants settled; today, the city is in the middle of a rapid change due to urban redevelopment. Through interviews with the locals, the artist has formatively interpreted the landscape of the city, resulting in a symbolic scene of life. As the title suggests, in “every second in between,” time becomes a place and forms particular relationships, resulting in a series of phenomena that functions as a psychological map of an imaginary character named ‘Stillman.’

Dong Geun Lee, through folding and shaping of a flat surface, explores the behavioral process revealed through the two- and three-dimensionality of an object. The visuo-cognitive desires and the unique experimentation of the planar surface due to the mingling of expectations can be seen as a structural approach to painting.

His representative work, the <Frankie’s Lover> collaboration, reconstructs a previous work to add to its meaning the notion of time presented through a reshaping of a plane. Also, the work condenses emotions like anticipation or fear towards movement and discovery of space and location, conveyed through the experiment of a stepwise evolution of the flat surface.

Titled after a pet name of Frankenstein, the work serves as a metaphor for a being of possibility, in its assembly, rejoining, and rebirth.

STAGE 2 Fluid Clock | The Flow of Time

Eve Kwak presents an installation work <Flowerland, Starland, Heaven, Hell>, notable especially for its spatial experimentation that evokes an abrupt and particular spatiotemporal experience. The title comes from a popular childhood play, in which one uses the number of strokes for writing one’s name to fortune-tell the world one will be in the afterlife, directly and indirectly, revealed through a coalition of everyday objects. The verses from Han Seok-bong’s calligraphy (a cliché in commercial folding screens) conveys a touching sentiment of one’s remaining years, communicating the notion of time through a mingling of old objects in their usage and commercial roles. Also featured are <Rough Sketch 2>, <Cloth Hanger Man 2>, and <Just. Now. %>, presented as abstract form structures that create a dynamic along with the meaning derived from the textures of composite objects.

Nicolas Pelzer’s double-channel video installation work <Soul Always Return to Itself> is presented in such a way as if two screens were facing each other through a mirror. In the work, a 3D image industrial structure revolves in a shape similar to a human heart, reminiscent of archaeological remains from the prehistoric era. Alongside are two projectors that cast shadows of each other and reveal each other’s existence on the screen, functioning as a critique of the materialistic fantasy and innovative technology consumed in the modern digital era.

STAGE 3 I Flat Staircase | The Union and Relationship of Time

Hansaem Kim presents his new series work <Whirlpool I & II> and <Wave I ~ IV> where he introduces an adventurous epic of the eternality of time. A structure that reveals an imaginary worldview of games is transformed through a peculiar relief work into a planar surface where water in a flow of water, symbolizes pain that one unwantedly encounters in life. The process in which the symbolic paintings of distinct waves move in and out of the trajectory of now and eternity is introduced through pixel images and six planar paintings.

Junhyun Bae projects a critical view on utopia in his series of painting works <Discoverer>, <Explorer>, and <Finder>, which are replicated and extended into large wall paintings installed along with the exhibition space. Imitating reportage, the imaginary landscapes filling the exhibition space have been taken from events of social injustice and disasters, reconstructed into a fictional vision that reminds us of an unspecified scene beyond our time.

At the same time, the works call into question the confusion caused by the vision of utopia as presented in the media. The original pieces of work, as well as their unrestrained modification and extension in form, bring to attention the errors that can be produced in imaginary stimulations and fictitious fantasies.

STAGE 4 I Flora Rail | The Retrospect of Time

Mingyu Song presents in a single landscape a scene that forms through a coalition of nighttime and daytime with space, region, and environment. The result is at once a landscape of forms, where the phase, the technique, and the logic of painting are stimulated, and a landscape of society, where such elements meet the structure of downtown or the language of the humanities. The presented piece <How Six People Look at the Moon> abstractly treats the motion and time of that which exists but nonmaterially flows, like a circular flight trajectory or a satellite in the night sky. The works <Unfolded Moon> and <Black bay 9-10> interpret deeper concepts of darkness and light through pure forms following the social values of colored sides.

Sueyeon Hwang presents a work consisting of theatrical paper sculptures titled <Dung Fly>, <Stupidity>, and <Night>. Each being a separate solid and yet united in space as a single collection, the sculptures reveal, through their completed state, the process of sculpting—i.e., the history of a solid. The unique time of this process gradually morphs into a formative time of clothing a material. The properties like quantity, force, weight, friction, height all transform into moments of change, and eventually the abstract structures intended by the artist—namely, the simple forms of the word combined into moments of humor—leave the sculpture existing as a body put on the original material.

Exhibition Production: The Great Commission

Curator: Zoe Chun

Artists: Dong Geun Lee, Eve Kwak, Hansaem Kim, Junhyun Bae, Kyung Hwa Shon, Mingyu Song, Nicolas Pelzer, Sueyeon Hwang

Performers: Da Hey Kang, Gwanmok Lee, Han Kim, Yu Ra Jo

Acting Director: Jihee Kim 

Music Producers: SEP, Woochi 

Lighting Designer: Ari Kim

Stage Designer: Sooran Kim (OURSTUDIO)

Designer: Hyeyeon Lee (Standard Document)

Photographer: Seungman Park

The Great Commission (directed by Zoe Chun) is a non-profit contemporary art organization that facilitates the production of exhibitions, performances, and publications. It exists to explore contemporary values through the production of an eclectic hybrid of artistic genres. TGC collaborates with artists to create the finest experimental artworks and expand the scope of the arts. It promotes creativity and altruism by granting platforms to unique, experimental artists. By presenting the arts in its finest forms, it seeks to stimulate the intellect and nourish the soul.

All rights reserved, 2020 © The Great Commission/ photo Seungman Park