Modern cinema makes a fresh pathway for art

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Modern cinema makes a fresh pathway for art

One of the delightful moments for visitors to an art gallery is when their impression of an artwork turns out to be the same as the professionals. With a lot of modern art this never happens. Most amateur art lovers still operate on the basis of “I know what I like,” and that dictum rarely applies to pieces that are too abstract or seemingly mundane to be easily accessible.
None of this applies to the exhibition entitled “Scandal Between Art and Movie.” It features work by 16 artists which they produced after watching some of the most popular films of recent times. This concept makes the exhibition instantly more available to a mass market audience. Each piece is based on films that most people will have seen. This gives the viewer and the artist a good basis for beginning a dialogue.
“The number of people going to movie theaters here is growing every year and it reached 89 million already in the first half of this year,” said Kang Suk-gyeong, the promoter of the event.
“That’s why these popular films make wonderful tools in making modern artworks,” she said. “It helps more people to appreciate them”
One of the most popular works here is called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a piece by Kang Hwa-su, who based it on the Academy Award-winning 2004 romance film by Michel Gondry. The movie uses science fiction to explore the nature of memory and love.
For Kang, the film helped her to work through her past, reminiscing about her experience with love. Through pencils, erasers and a piece of paper, she portrays in her work how difficult it was to “erase” her own memories of past encounters.
“In the 1980s, singer Jeon Yeong-rok used to sing that ‘love should be written down on a paper with a pencil’ so that you can dispose of it easily [after the love ends] with an eraser,” she writes in the short essay posted next to her installation. “But ironically, the memory still hurts because it does not entirely go away like the waste the erasure creates after rubbing out the pencil mark.”
The organizers say they have high hopes for the exhibition, which is partly aimed at members of the publis who may not be familiar with the idea of visiting a gallery.


by Lee Min-a

“Scandal Between Art and Movie” runs until Oct.26th at the Joongang Cinema. The cinema is located near exit 12 of Euljiro 3-ga station on subway line 2.
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