Media Cleansing

by Moon Seok Lee

The first thing you notice when you walk into the gallery are the six pieces of gray sculptures, which resemble the human fossils at Pompeii. They look like natural rough stones from a distance, but when you get up close, you will see the cracked surface of the paper pulp made from shredded papers. To make these sculptures, the artist Leeeunji shredded old magazines, free flyers, leftover papers from a fellow artist, and the drawings she had previously made. The paper that passed through the shredder becomes thicker than conifers and thinner than broad leaves. Thousands of texts and illustrations on these papers get completely disintegrated in the process. After soaking up these shredded pieces of paper in water, Lee makes them into a thick semi-fluid pulp. She then pastes the pulp on the armatures for her sculptures. Once the pulp is dried, it becomes the epidermis of her sculptures. Occasionally, you will see the paper leaves sticking out when not having been completely disintegrated; previous records of those papers are seen on these small paper leaves. Some audiences have approached these small clues and tried to figure out where these papers came from. Traces of the source can be confirmed only when approaching closer, but some of the sources are hung on the wall surrounding these rough, textured sculptures. The eleven ink drawings are not necessarily the materials used in the sculptures. However, the same drawings of those eleven drawings were used to make paper pulp for the sculptures. 

The eleven drawings make us imagine what reference was used in creating the six sculptures, and the surface of the six sculptures remind us of the eleven drawings. We need to ask a question about how artworks – both on the wall and on the floor –indicate each other’s past and future in a cycle. Which time zone is the system corresponding to when positioned to face the drawing as a preliminary reference and the sculpture as a predetermined result? 

If we acknowledge that the paper originated from mixing, liquefying, and drying vegetable fiber, we can see that the reproduction cycle of this recording medium has been actively used for a long time. Back in the Joseon Dynasty, there was a government department called Jojiseo, where they produced and preserved paper for federal use. Its site was in the vicinity of where Segeomjeong, Jongro-gu is now located. Hongjecheon is a stream that flows in front of the Segeomjeong, and is where people went to wash away the rough drafts of history. 'Silok' is a history book written after a king’s death, recording what happened during the reign of a male ruler. All the drafts of this book were cleansed in this stream. 

To avoid historical disagreement, the vegetable soot stuck in between the paper fibers is discarded downstream. This process is called ‘Secho.’ Secho is a process of erasing the record of events that occurred during the reign of a king and reconstructing the record. During this process, there was a contest between records of the same affairs. Certain records were transferred over to high quality paper, and other disputed contents were shredded, soaked, and stored as recycled tissue. This was to narrow down the range of interpretation of the records. Also, paper was not small in value. 

If we speculate about the Secho process, it recycled the ecosystem of paper, the recording medium, but the contents of the records were not circulated. Secho shows that the stronger voice takes over the weaker voice in the records. The authority to select what was to remain in the records became a power, and the records were circulated under this power. As the struggle between the characteristics of the medium and the record itself intertwined, the vegetable fibers became fragmented, washed out in water, kneaded, dried, stretched, and returned to the scene of recording. 

Lee actively uses the recycling process of paper, and she does not let certain records to overpower another in her work. From magazines to her past works, various printed materials were shredded. There is no specificity over quality or type of paper she uses. Furthermore, the exhibition space is not only comprised of three-dimensional solidified paper paste, and her drawings do not solely exist to create three-dimensional objects. This tells us that the artist is not merely obsessed with paper paste or dried-up solid state. The records do not compete with each other, but become paper paste together. Thus, the sculpture surface becomes a kind of neutral zone. There are no hierarchies in two- or three-dimensions, but it seems that what the artist is trying to do is to create a strange ecosystem where the flat surface remains as a reference and the solid remains as a remainder. 

Regarding the meaning of ‘leftover’, the <leftover> series could mean two things: one is that paper remains as a fibrous tissue, and latter a recording medium. Here, paper can be seen as an object mixed with recycles as its origin but also treated as one of the highly regarded recording mediums in history. Paper cannot be viewed separately from the former or the latter, because the craving for reproducible record led to paper. The <leftover> series create fragments of new works through the reproduction and archival characteristics of media. Beyond time and space, these fragments are traces of a given role of engraving the written records, showing the rubble that has been crushed for the creation of a certain record (new work). The life and death of a record is revealed from the two main characteristics of a medium. 

Produced since 2016, <Leftover 03> barely reveals the traces of previous records, because the paper paste placed on top of the plastic basket has been soaked for a long time and lost its origin. On the other hand, most of the recent works created in 2019 use the paper itself as a frame, and the pieces that have not been shredded enough stick out and adhere on the surface. The liquefied paper pulp gradually hardens over time as moisture evaporates. The surface of dry paper is very different from that of the surface of pasty pulp; crushing and cockling. So, the paper pulp becomes more crushed and is full of chunks than when it was first put on. The coagulated movement usually refers to the moment of falling, and it also expresses the state when a video is paused. Just as the artist keeps her work in a certain state throughout the paper's recycling cycle, in the form of paper pulp, the form always stays in a certain static motion.  

Is there a connection between the sculptures that look like still images and paper hovering in a certain state? As mentioned above, two-dimensional works are used as materials for creating three-dimensional works. If the drawings on the wall are the reference point for the sculpture’s form and medium, we need to postpone answering this question immediately and focus on the drawings. Behind the crowd surrounds several sumi ink colored bulbous bulbs. In <Heavy Breath> and <Breathing Space>, hands, fists, and the lower body from behind are illustrated with overlapping bulbs. The roots of massive trees are covered with soil in a sphere shape. The <Downtime> and <Breathing> series used water-based graphite, and for this reason the strokes here are in between the thickness of the short graphite stroke and the black ink line. As the stroke spreads, the mineral carbon substance was gently scattered to depict young plants and a human lying face down. In <Panting>, the texture of the ground or the bush rustling in the wind is expressed in graphite strokes. <Wheezing> is a human figure that is likely to fall while running in a cartoony way. The artist says that abstracting images of the body and later expressing more intuitively results in the image of the shape of a tree. Lee also reflected on how humans were often projected onto non-human beings or inanimate objects in East Asian painting history. 

However, the origin of symbolism of an analogy between human figures and plants do not answer whether Lee's work is oriented towards the specific state of the medium called paper or paper pulp. In addition, the shape of bulbs often appears in the drawing, and the sculptures need to be more closely connected for them to express stationary movement. The artist has expressed a realistic hope that her work will be easier to move, and I do not know if this point can be a clue. The artist is considering different production methods because of the medium’s changing condition and weight. Compared to the lightweight sculpture, the wood board is heavy to move. The artist consistently pondered upon the issue of media. The link between the ambiguous state of 'remnants' and the appearance of flat, natural objects needs to be approached as a matter of media. The artist naming the exhibition title as “Holding Breath” reveals that the metaphor of “ambiguity” has to do with the problem in the ambiguity of media. 

Let us talk about paper as a medium for reproduction and documentation; and about 'Secho' scenes again. On the day that Secho was happening, a banquet called Sechoyeon was held in Chailam. The selected memoirs were carried to the palace on a palanquin, while omitted records from the selection and the initial records were washed away with water. The day the unselected record was destroyed was the day the record selection was completed. We can call Sechoyeon as the cannibalism of the records, where obliteration and celebration within the records taken place at once.  

However, the drawings and the sculptures in Lee’s studio do not result in such struggle while celebrating the completion or birth of the records. Instead, her sculptures that look like human fossils are holding their breath. This is because there is no hierarchy among the records, archives, and a recording medium in this ecosystem of ambiguity. For Lee, records are sometimes her own drawings and her drawings also get shredded with magazines and soaked in water to become a part of her sculptures. It continues to result in a certain form as paper porridge. So, it maintains the ecosystem of the media calmly and diligently as the paper is shredded and the records are blurred. Moreover, the artist tries to add attention to the material by limiting her color palette. The artist mainly uses ink to minimize the interpretation of color and to concentrate on the interpretation of media. Therefore, the form is recognized as none other than an ink form. When the printed material is crushed and soaked in water, the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) values on printed material are mixed and become closer to an achromatic color.  

The recurrence of the paper medium in a particular state is not related to the state of the media. It is intertwined with the artist’s concern over the medium and the state of ink. It is not the saturation value at 0 degree nor the brightness value at 0 degree, but the light when ink is settled on the paper surface and the light when the soaked paper fibers are entangled together. The color is not a result of blocking other colors, but from selecting a specific color of the spectrum, which is strictly part of the work. The practice of the medium becomes an ecosystem and flows steadily from the plane to the three-dimensional surface. An incomplete state of the practice reveals a three-dimensional human figure. The work repeatedly grinds and melts so that the plane becomes a three-dimensional skin. The creation of this ecosystem remains as a human fossil formed by the accumulation of dust in the “black medium.” 

The artist seems to continue to make work on paper using sumi ink; only achromatic colors such as black and gray. Achromatic color appears when ink or water-based graphite is smeared onto paper. When the liquified carbon absorbs into the vegetable fiber tissue, the layers between black and white make waves according to the component’s density, dispersion, and breadth. These achromatic color waves line up vertically and horizontally like a waterway and remain as black characters against a white background. The backbone of the archival system in East Asia is a vegetable fiber with a dry carbon component. For a long time, the act of recording is indebted to black and white forest trails and waterways to leave texts. Most records wanted this entanglement of black and white materials to remain there for a long time. The aim of the written records is to keep the tradition of this form: the long-lived black waterways and black fruits forever hanging from the branches. However, Lee's practice of the recording media tends to push the act of documentation in one direction. At this time, the media practice she tried in the past becomes blurry. As the sumi ink drawings go back into the water, the dried black and white waterway bursts, and the vegetable fiber is submerged in water and the suspended carbon components are wiped out. The trajectory of the work piles up layer by layer, resulting in a thick fluid. By the time everything dries out again, the surface becomes bumpy. As if the same words changed gradually by a word of mouth. Lee's practice of recording media is fragmented, physically separated, chemically combined with other practices, and transmitted in a modified form. It is condensed in the manner of oral recording while using the method of written recording. 

The work renews as a next work, but the record above gets erased like Secho process. Nevertheless, Lee has been converting written records into oral expression to elicit a response to each moment in time. This is the conclusion of the practice in dealing with ink-bit paper media.