Repositioning the Object, 1985–1996
The works I exhibited in the Meta-Vox and small-group exhibitions in 1985 and the works I researched in my studio belonged to different contexts.
This discrepancy remained a burden until the group was eventually dissolved, and most of the works I investigated until around 1989 were never publicly presented.
During this period, I repeatedly carried out a process in which I collected branches, soil, and fruits from the wooded hills near my studio, installed them in their original state, and constructed works through provisional arrangements.
Once the conceptual process had been completed, I documented the work photographically, dismantled the installation, and returned the materials to their original place.
This process functioned as a methodology through which I articulated a different position toward objects within the context of Western art.
Rather than treating things as representational materials or objects of conceptual thought, I approached them as beings that exist alongside me, attempting to reconstruct the balance of that relationship through the work.
The essential question was how a point of contact with the object could be opened.
In order to avoid artificial composition or conceptual imposition, I focused instead on the time required to sense and understand the object itself.
One day in 1988, I encountered the roots of a plane tree that had been cut down during a roadside tree replacement project and left on the sidewalk.
Struck by its presence, I asked permission to move it and placed it in front of my studio.
Yet it took more than a year before I was able to find a meaningful point of connection with it.
The clue appeared unexpectedly one day when I attempted to move the root.
At the moment when the root happened to turn toward the sky, I recognized the form that had been hidden within it.
From that point on, the work unfolded almost as if following a natural order.
In September of that year, I presented the work in the Meta-Vox dissolution exhibition.
It was both the end of the small-group movement and a declaration that I would begin to present more fully the “repositioning” works I had been researching during that time.
untitled 89-2, 1989
untitled 89-2, root and branches, animal's bones, etc, 1989
untitled 89-4, 1989
untitled 89-4, pigment and red brick powder, 1989
1985-1989 studies
untitled 88-5, branches and soil, 1988
untitled 86-4, Paper and fruits buried in a mound of sand and excavated again after a certain period of time, 1986
untitled 87-1, Branches installed upright indoors, with wild vines brought through a window and wrapped around the branches,1987
untitled 88-3, branches and soil, 1988
untitled 86-7, Stones and pinecones wrapped in newspaper and wire mesh, then burned, 1986
One work involved hanging 600 grams of pork behind my studio in order to film the process of its decay and disappearance.
However, the first piece of meat disappeared the next day, and the second piece also vanished a few days after insects began to appear, making it impossible to record the full process of decomposition.
Later, while studying early video works during my participation in the P.S.1 program, I discovered that Bill Viola had documented the decomposition of an animal carcass left in a forest.
This led me to become interested in the simultaneity of artistic investigations that appear independently among artists working in different places.
untitled 86-3, 600 grams of pork and acrylic paint, 1986