길에는 먼저 간 사람의 자취가 있다

Gunsan (2015)

길에는 먼저 간 사람의 자취가 있다 (The Road Has Traces of Those Who Went) BeforeArt Residency festival in Jeonbuk 10, Yidang arthouse, Gunsan, South Korea.

This exhibition presents a concise yet layered synthesis of the artist’s research developed during a residency in South Korea. Structured as both a visual and conceptual journey, the project interrogates the notion of the “margin” as a physical, cultural, and symbolic space. The artist focuses on the tension between technological expansion and the persistence of rural practices, particularly in the peripheral and agricultural landscapes of South Korea. Through this lens, the works reflect on contemporary modes of living and the population’s relationship with the sacred—an element that subtly permeates everyday life, even within rapidly modernizing contexts. The exhibited pieces emerge as the outcome of an interpretive process, an abstracted reading of an evolving narrative in which themes of travel, Buddhism, and landscape intertwine.

Central to the exhibition is the concept of the “Manifeste du Tiers paysage” theorized by Gilles Clément, referring to spaces abandoned or overlooked by human activity. These include protected natural reserves and vast uninhabited territories, as well as marginal, often invisible zones: derelict industrial sites overtaken by spontaneous vegetation, or fragments of wild growth emerging in urban interstices such as traffic islands. Despite their heterogeneity in scale and status, these environments share a defining absence of direct human control. Collectively, however, they play a crucial role in preserving biodiversity. Within this framework, the exhibition foregrounds biodiversity not merely as a biological condition but as a critical paradigm for understanding resilience and coexistence. These marginal ecosystems function as reservoirs of genetic diversity, offering alternative models of adaptation and survival in contrast to highly regulated, anthropogenic environments. The works suggest that such spaces—fragile yet generative—hold essential insights for rethinking ecological futures.

The exhibition also includes a video work filmed in a rice-field region, where a stark division between road and river becomes a visual metaphor for separation and interdependence. Here, biodiversity manifests along the thresholds: in the liminal zones where cultivated land meets unmanaged growth, and where human infrastructure intersects with natural systems. Ultimately, the exhibition proposes a speculative equilibrium—a possible convergence between technological evolution and the enduring knowledge embedded in rural and traditional practices. By mapping these relationships, the artist invites viewers to reconsider the margins not as voids, but as fertile grounds for regeneration, memory, and ecological continuity.

표면과 잔여물의 고요 속에서, 허락을 구하지 않고 자라는 것이 있다: 가장자리에 머무는 흔적, 지나간 숨결.