공간의 여백을 감각하는 표면 ("우리 안의 공기" 개인전 도록글 2020)
글. 전효경 (리움미술관 큐레이터)
전시 <우리 안의 공기>에서 신현정의 작품은 각기 다른 챕터를 가진 듯 걸음을 옮길 때마다 새로운 이야기를 펼친다. 작가는 이번 개인전에서 2013년부터 올해까지 그간 해온 여러 실험을 스스로 참고하며 전시를 구성했다. 세 개층으로 이루어진 갤러리수의 전시 공간은 입구부터 동선이 명확하다. 몇 걸음마다 몸의 방향을 계속 돌리게 되어, 한 시야 안에 공간이 단번에 들어오지 않으며, 가장 많은 작품이 전시된 2층 공간은 비교적 가로로 길어 관람객은 도면이 제시한 순서를 따라서 작품을 감상하게 된다. 신현정은 위아래 층을 연결하는 계단도 전시 공간으로 사용하면서 전시장을 거니는 경험에 어떤 공간적 수사를 더한다. 신현정의 작품은 이 동선이 긴 공간에 작품을 제작한 시기와 제작 방식의 구분을 따라 걸려있는데, 작가가 작품을 제작해온 서사가 최근의 것부터 역순으로 진행된다.
작가는 평면의 의미를 실험하면서, 작품을 이루는 가장 기본적인 ‘표면’으로 천을 사용한다. 전통적인 의미에서 대다수의 그림이 캔버스 위에 그려지기 때문에 표면을 구성하는 지지대로서의 천을 회화의 당연한 조건으로 여기는 경우가 많은데, 신현정은 손으로 천을 만지면서 전통적인 맥락에서 회화라는 것이 성립되기 위해 필요한 ‘표면’과 ‘지지대’의 의미를 되새김질한다. 신현정은 천의 질감과 두께를 선택하고, 필요에 따라 이를 염색(혹은 탈색)하는 방식으로 천의 색을 달리한다. 그리고 캔버스의 틀 사이즈에 맞도록 각기 다른 천으로 면을 분할하고, 꿰매어 한 장의 ‘표면’으로 만든 후, 틀에 맞춰 짠다. 그 위에 스프레이로 공기 섞인 색을 퍼트리거나, 물감을 흩뿌리거나, 혹은 천 위에 또 다른 천을 덧대어 그림을 ‘그린다.’
이렇게 2차원적인 평면을 분할하는 시도는 여러 차원에서 면밀하게 확장된다. 애초에 평면을 분할하고자 ‘표면’을 가공하는 과정은 평면을 다루는 여타 회화 작업들에 비해 훨씬 복잡하다. 1층부터 2층 전시장의 입구까지는 신현정의 가장 최근작들을 전시했는데, 작품의 표면을 만들기 위해 무게감이 다양해 보이는 천을 조합했다. 특히 천 중에는 캔버스 프레임과 일반적으로 같이 잘 쓰이지 않는, 비교적 가볍고 얇은 실크도 포함돼 있는데, 이 부분은 작품의 표면을 하나의 이미지로 인식하기 이전에 어떤 물질의 조합임을 알게 하는데 결정적인 역할을 한다. 이 작품들 중 시리즈 작품인
3층으로 올라가는 계단 아래서 위 공간을 올려보면 창가에서 흩어진 채광을 한껏 받아 마주하고 있는 작품
이번 전시는 지난 개인전 <점선면과 날씨>(2015), <대기를 상대하는>(2018)에 이어 <우리 안의 공기>(2020)라는 제목으로 연결된다. 순간의 상태에 집중하던 이전의 작업에서 발전하여, <우리 안의 공기>에서는 작가가 다루는 재료의 물질성 자체와, 그것이 존재하게 만드는 여러 상황이 가진 물리적인 조건을 그대로 직면하면서, 단일한 유닛으로서의 작품이 아니라 작품이 존재하게 된 경위와 조건을 모두 작품으로 여기고 있다. 그는 자신의 신체와 타인 사이에 존재하는 다차원적인 공간을 그 자체로 오해없이 인식하고자 한다. 이렇게 자신과 외부 세계 사이의 에너지를 제어하지 않으면서 작품의 표면에 그 공간의 공기를 심기도 하고, 표면을 렌즈삼아 공간의 여백을 감각하기도 한다. 이러한 노력은 작품과 자신 사이의 여러 조건에 대한 세밀한 집중을 가지고, 작가가 전개하는 그만의 기술이자 예술적 실천일 것이다.
Perceiving the ‘Spaces’ of Space through Surfaces ("Air within Us" solo show 2020)
Hyo gyoung Jeon (Curator, Art Sonje Center)
Fay Shin’s artwork in Air within Us tells new stories like different chapters that unfold with each step. The artist developed this solo exhibition by referring to the different experiments she had attempted between 2013 and the present year. With its three-story structure, the Gallery Su exhibition space has clearly defined paths of movement that start with its entrance. The visitor continues to change direction with each step, so that the space never fully enters their field of vision; the second-floor space where most of the artwork is exhibited has a relatively long horizontal layout, where the viewer encounters the artwork according to the sequence dictated by the floor plan. Even the staircase connecting the upper and lower floors is employed by Shin as an exhibition setting, adding a note of spatial rhetoric to the experience of walking through the gallery. Within this setting of long pathways, her artwork has been hung according to time and method of production, the narrative of creation proceeding in reverse order from the most recent.
In experimenting with the meaning of two-dimensionality, the artist employs fabric as the most basic ‘surface’ for her work. Since most paintings in the traditional sense are rendered on canvas, fabric is often taken for granted as an element of painting, serving as a support that provides a surface. As she feels the fabric by hand, Shin reflects on the meanings of the ‘surface’ and ‘support’ needed for painting to exist in the traditional context. She selects the texture and thickness of her fabric, altering its color as needed through the use of dyes (or bleaching). She divides up sections with different fabrics to match the size of the canvas’s frame, stitching them together into a single ‘surface’ that is composed to suit the frame. On top of this, she applies a sprayed mixture of air and color, scattered paints, or ‘images’ produced by overlaying other fabrics on the top of the existing fabric.
These attempts to partition the two-dimensional surface expand in intricate ways in different dimensions. The process of manipulating a ‘surface’ to divide up two dimensions is inherently much more complex than other forms of painting work that involve working in two dimensions. Shin’s most recent work is shown in the space from the first floor to the entrance of the gallery’s second floor, with fabrics of seemingly different ‘weights’ combined to produce the surfaces in her pieces. Her fabrics include silk, a relatively light and thin material that is not often used with a canvas frame; it plays a pivotal role in making the viewer aware that the artwork’s surfaces are combinations of certain materials before they are perceived as single images. This form of composition is most actively used by the works in the series Bones and Pools (2020), which uses transparent fabric over a relatively large area to reveal the supporting canvas frame behind, with cord-like pieces of fabric placed across a silk surface – resulting in a dynamic achieved through the weights of the different materials that make up the surface. The silk is a crucial element in making the viewer concretely aware of the artwork’s individual components. Another notable aspect of this work is the use of spray-painting and bleaching, both techniques that Fay Shin has often employed in the past. They are proactive means of altering the properties and surfaces of the materials she uses, with the artist applying an approach of adding or subtracting color from her materials rather than simply using them as they are. There is an element of chance to this, as the chemical changes and outcome of bleaching can never be fully predicted – but Shin also predetermines the proper weight and temperature for the objects that make up her surfaces, as well as the scope of her color. Her methods of achieving a surface result are similar to the process of crafts. Because the very compositional conditions are being gradually decided for an artwork to be produced in the future, the artist’s unique craft techniques and calculations are necessary to achieve particular imagery, even when it is being decided on an intuitive basis. Moreover, this process blurs the boundary between the surface of the two-dimensional artwork and the object supporting that surface. A work created under conditions where the distinction between surface and support has become difficult results in a sensation where the viewer encountering it within space feels less like they are witnessing a two-dimensional image and more like they are confronting a certain material. (In a traditional sense, this is similar to the experience of viewing sculpture.) Because Fay Shin’s hangs in the form of fabric over a frame, the viewer may resort naturally to the habitual viewing of a two-dimensional artwork – but as they spend more time in the gallery, they may become aware that they are perceiving the different energies constituting a surface rather than ‘images’ that arise within a particular surface’s frame. Each given work ripples replete with the totality of the energy invested by the artist, while the assemblage of the works in one space produces constant variations in the velocity and direction of that energy. It is an energy manifested in its most condensed fashion in the innermost section of the second floor gallery, reaching its zenith when the viewer encounters Front and Back Side of the Planet: Motility, Ion, Wave (2019), for which the artist installed fabric within the space after a time-consuming process of preparations. The ‘surface’ that Shin has created here does not rely on the traditional frame structure to achieve completeness; instead, it becomes part of the space in its own right. From the viewer’s perspective, entering this space is an experience that actively engages the body’s senses.
Looking up from the base of the stairs leading to the third floor, the viewer sees Drink Up the Sky (2020), which basks in the rays of sunlight as they spread through the windows. Moving through a passageway that seems to welcome the viewer as they pass into the exhibition’s next ‘chapter,’ they come to a setting where the works in the artist’s early Weather Painting series (2016) greet the outside landscape in a space with large windows. Here is where the exhibition’s story ends, placidly emanating the scents of bygone times as though harboring the colors of the outside scenery.
Bearing the title Air within Us, this 2020 exhibition follows Shin’s past solo exhibitions Points, Lines, Planes and Weather (2015) and Confronting the Atmosphere (2018). It represents a progression from the past works’ focus on momentary states: in Air within Us, the artist confronts the physicality of her materials and the physical conditions of the different situations that led to their being, where not simply the individual artwork ‘units’ but also the circumstances and conditions behind their existence are regarded as part of the artwork. Shin is attempting to perceive the multidimensional space between her own person and others just as it is, without misunderstanding. Without seeking to control the energy between herself and the outside world, she infuses the air of her setting into the surface of her work, adopting the surface as a lens to perceive the margins within the spatial environment. With their meticulous focus on the different conditions existing between herself and the artwork, these efforts represent the artist’s idiosyncratic technique and means of artistic practice.