HAN Sungpil: Dual Realities

Arario Gallery Seoul proudly presents artist Han Sungpil’s solo exhibition Dual Realities from April 7th to May 8th 2011. Exhibited works include new additions to the Façade Project, an on-going series of work dealing with subject of two realities since 2004, experimentation in three video works, and installation works. The exhibition reflects the modern man’s desires to experience the ideal within reality.

Using the most realistic yet imaginary medium of photography, Han Sungpil’s on-going series of work Façade Project is one of the most evocative works of this generation. Meaning the front side or the whole side of a building, and metaphorically suggesting the exterior or appearance of a matter, the word façade has mutated into an everyday term referring to the “dust layer”. At conservation construction sites of traditional architecture or cultural artifacts in Europe, the dust layer becomes a form of public art as it shows images of famous paintings by masters or the image of the building after the construction. One might also find trompe l’oeil paintings on parts of old building walls, communicating with the public and adding elements of fun in everyday life. Although those façades are ultimately just an illusion, they become a delightful medium communicating with by-passers. An artist who masterfully applies the trends and spirit of this generation into his work, Han’s façade projects wrap around construction sites and buildings to engage with the public.


Two Types of Façade
Han’s façade series has been under progress of evolution in preparation for this solo exhibition. Among the exhibited works, the piece that shines when brightly illuminated, and the image of glass-walled buildings, will be lit up in light box. The light boxes will be installed in the mirror room covered in Barrisol Fabric, where repetitive flickering is regulated in time lag between the mirror and the images.
The trompe l’oeil works depicting warm pastoral scenes on the entire surface will be shown framed like his past works. The interesting aspect of Han’s works is that buildings are captured in multiple angles, and the images from various vantage points are combined into one. Most of the images pursue the serenity and beauty of pastoral landscape, as well as witty and delightful everyday scenes, such as doves on the roof, fresh trees and shrubs, people in love, and people talking on the phone.


Imagination in History, and Now
This exhibition also presents works in which imagination and reality, key words that penetrate Han Sungpil’s works, reflect the present reality. The works rooted from the artist’s approach to the current context of (Karl Heinrich Marx1818~1883) and (Friedrich Engels 1820~1895), the two major figures of Marxism, the system of social political ideology.
In Berlin, Germany, the birthplace of Marx and Engels and their ideologies, there is a park called Marx-Engels Forum constructed by the East German government. On April 4th 1986, the monuments of Marx and Engels that weigh 2 tons were installed in the park, making it one of the most important places in the city. When the Berlin Wall fell three years later in 1989, the German Federation government proposed taking down the monuments. The city residents resisted; thus, the figures are still standing to this day.

However, in September 2010, the monuments came face-to-face with extreme changes in their fate, when the expanding city adopted a new city planning which included the construction of new lines of Berlin underground. As if Marx’s legendary exclamation “Worker of All Lands, Unite!“ engraved on his epitaph united all the workers at the site of the construction, they dug up the monuments, and turn them into a laughing stock by marking on their heads a target point like a Bindi (a dot marked in the middle of Hindi women’s forehead). In the end, the monuments were relocated to a different location. Ironically, instead of being positioned to face the East, the origin of their values, they were repositioned to face the West: the symbolic place of capitalism and democracy which they anticipated to collapse.

Through Façade Project, and other installation and video works in the exhibition, Dual Realities reflects on the duality of reality and imagination. With a camera in his hand, artist Han Sungpil is instinctively responsive to his contemporary context.