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The Performance of Sung NeungKyung: Playing in Multi-level Boundaries

  • Journal of History of Modern Art
  • 2001, (13), pp.127-146
  • Publisher : 현대미술사학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Art > Arts in general > Art History
  • Received : November 30, 2001
  • Accepted : December 31, 2001
  • Published : December 31, 2001

Kim Hong Hee 1

1

ABSTRACT

The artistic career of Sung NeungKyung can be divided into two phases, namely conceptual art of the 70-80s and the postmodern performance since the 90s. As his art changed from conceptual works revolving around minimalistic events and semiotic photo installations to trans-genre performance, he established a new style based on his own sensibility. However, his style can't be simply labeled as 'Sung NeungKyung Style'. His work is best described as postmodern hybrid with no room for individuality, or as a pastiche that is not particularly characterizable. Seem­ ingly being better suited for hybrid rather than pedantic conceptual art, he is con­tinuously developing hybrid variations, which is noticeable in the sense that it clearly demonstrates his trans-genre sensib山ty and also it continues presently. Sung's hybrid performance is one of maximized excess; excess of actions and events, excess of props, excess of speech and text. In particular, the reading of prepared text, chanting of spells, forcing of audience participation, and other ex­cessive chattering make his performance noisy, unfocused, tedious, gossipy, and in some instances brings to mind the mess and disorder of the market place or country theatre. Another effect of excess is boredom. His performance, which is excessive in time as well, cannot escape the bounds of boredom. It is an endless senes of unrelated one-scene events and repetition of identical actions. For an audience familiar with interesting and exciting theatre, this is a new experience of boredom and puzzlement. However, boredom, a cause for aesthetic tension, can become a communicative tool that rouses the audience. In this context, the aes­ thetic significance of Sung's plain, tedious, and long performance that has no climax can be better understood. Sung's performance, a product of the 90s, is in fact closer to the 70s paradigm. This is because, although the pastiche and bricollage style falls under postmodernism, his work shares the utopian ideal of modern avantgarde in terms of politics. His dual identity of maintaining modern avantgarde resolve in postmodern perfor­mance is likely related to the sentiment of the 70-80s period to which he belonged. In this period dominated by monochrome painting, he had freed herself from the orbit of modernism in terms of genre as evidenced by his works with photography, installations, and events. However, in terms of aesthetics, form, and politics, these works were still conceptually linked to modernism. The fact that his performance sits on the boundary of modernism and postmodernism with a compound dual identity makes it difficult to clearly classify his art. Such difficulty in labeling her work, or the impossibility of defining traits that lacked peculiarity and individuality may have caused his art to remain in the blind spot of identity and the outskirts of art history. Or perhaps the artist, in a naive but stubborn artistic instinct, chose to remain a periphery artist with a hidden lonely joy of sitting on multiple borders.

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