Nature, Human Being & Sound The 5th Biennale of Art and Nature -John K. Grande

Gongju, South Korea Nature, Human Being & Sound

The 5th Biennale of Art and Nature

 

                                                                                                Sculpture Magazine May 2013 issue

 

This 5th Art & Nature Biennale in South Korea whose theme is Nature, Human & Sound is generated by Yatoo, a group that has been in existence since the early 1980s. The outdoor artworks for the Biennale are like an apotheosis of where land art came from, where earth art is, and where art and nature will be going as an art form. What is less well known is that Yatoo is Chinese for “field throw”, a term drawn from basketball, to suggest scoring a basket from far off. For Yatoo the field throw referenced the inherent domination of the South Korean arts scene by the city of Seoul. In reaction to the urban scene, the Four Seasons artists group began a movement in Gongju and around Chungnam province. They were joined by some Seoul artists for the venture. The original Four Seasons group engaged in on site outdoors actions or performances in natures that were of a very short duration. Whether they were documented or unrecorded they represented a special orientation in South Korean contemporary art and that orientation was towards nature as a source for art making. When the group Yatoo replaced the early Four Seasons group in 1981 and the Art & Nature movement that evolved in Gongju became increasingly international, with the 1st Art & Nature Biennale in 2004. Yatoo is now seeking to engage in exchanges around the world. One of these is in Hungary this autumn.

For this 2012 Biennale the mix is international with a strong Korean representation as well. The on site sculptures that resulted range from conceptual, to land art-ish, to purely sculptural, to sound sculptures seek to integrate with their environment. Some works like Kees Ouwens, Herb Parker’s and Alois Leopold Lindenbauer’s are sustainable, while some like Roger Rogorth’s are poetic. All the creations, produced on site were by the Geumgang River in Gongju.

Herb Parker’s Geumgang Dialogue consists of two structures based on the earliest lived-in spaces people in South Korea would have inhabited after the early cave dwellings. Like these Parker’s is made out of bamboo with a thatching material. The two structures are connected and fit into each other, as if they are one structure with a single opening. People can sit in either side and communicate through hourglass-like opening...

German sculptor Thomas May, founder of the Grass Blade Institute in Germany created a kind of “hortus conclusus” or enclosed garden. Five Person Garden enabled people to enter into an exchange as they put their heads inside this hanging structure with grass growing inside. Roger Rigorth’s personal poetic of dragonfly-like wings float by the Geumgang River. A similar floating sculpture was created by Rigorth for a sculpture event in the DMZ (demilitarized zone). Rigorths’s floating wings with their rhythmic motion generated by the wind were so popular he was asked to produce a new version for Gongju. Alois Leopold Lindenbauer’s “living boat” gradually took shape as he planted living willow trees into its structure, filling its form with local earth. Lindenbauer’s boat is actually one of two. The second is at a daycare in Weyer, upper Austria. The two boats metaphorically were created as a single work of art. Lindenbauer’s is an action of cultural exchange and understanding. The Korean sculptor Ri-Eung-woo ‘s Arirang consists of rings that hang from a bridge over a river. The work references Korea’s traditional song Arirang and the subject of a 1926 Korean film directed by Na Un'gyu (1902-1937), one of the earliest features to be made in Korea. Ri-Eung-woo ‘s line of rings in varying dimensions are like the bars in this sound on a music sheet. Reflected in the river, the sculpture has a dream-like quality that is a reinterpretation of the joy and sorrow of this song Arirang.

Cypriot artist Tatiana Farahian’s Chime of Orpheus is a metaphorical site-specific sculpture made by collaging scissors she brought over from Cyprus for the show. The scissors, all woven together like a veil with a deep patina, framed the river and landscape view that extended into the distance. As Farahian says, “The scissors symbol is drawn from Greek mythology where Atropos, one of the Three Fates, used scissors to cut the thread of life. This artwork is a warning about the hazards to nature that result from human activity.” Les Fujak, a duo from France produced Blue Planet Blues, an Eco-Pop Earth Art sculpture that is like a huge Claes Oldenberg-like record and stylus made out of on site materials.

Roumanian Peter Alpar created a structure out of giant sections of bamboo that are like flutes whose sounds are generated by the wind or passers-by who try them out. Attiila Pokorny chose to work with an upturned tree rendering it into a stringed musical instrument. Like a harp, Pokorny’s sound piece invited the public to play for the duration of the symposium. Pokorny comments, “My goal is to make a harp gate. Set in an open space of nature, the tree communicates a feeling of eternity for each human being who plays the chords, touches the sculpture, and sense the connection between materials, surfaces and phenomena.” Ko Seung-hyun’s tree/instrument The Sound of a Thousand Years is a contemporary recreation of the ancient Korean instrument but scales it up into sculpture.

Swiss sculptor Maria Dundakova’s Wind Song Way is a carved stone sound sculpture. Cut as it is the stone becomes an instrument with various resonances and depths. “Each empty space is an acoustic sound where the Ur-sound of the Earth is stored. When we touch a stone, we touch the universe.” Dundakova commented.

Kees Ouwens a sculptor who designs traditional gardens in Japan, created an evolutive structure with sisal, stones and branches that, in his own words, “(… ) could be a nature cathedral or a utopian city. When the water rises people can sit and contemplate.” Italian Elena Redaelli created a weaving around a tree that echoed and accentuated the beauty of the tree itself. Myriam duManoir’s twin shelters made of beer bottles and mud were a colourful example of sustainability and resource re-use as the light projected through the glass inside. Joo Young Kim’s brick container has a roof element that catches rain that drops into a well inside. Park, hyung-pil’s fish, one caught on a line, the other still swimming, were a popular site to see along the riverside, while Kim, En-kyung’s The Sound of Creatures with its circle of stone hands that surround Day-Glo like over-sized ants captured all the drama of nature in a very unique, animistic way, something that recalls the most ancient aspects of traditional Korean culture.

As lively a sculpture exchange as one could find, this year’s 5th Art & Nature Biennale encouraged experimentation and inter-cultural communication. The sculptures produced in 2012 were more consistent in quality overall than in earlier Art & Nature Biennales.

 

- John K. Grande