<Ggondae: Revolution>

Solo Exhibition

Date: 2023.8.2 - 2023.8.19

Location: Gallery P1_Seoul (Seoul, Korea)

<Ggondae: Revolution> is an experimental work based on a solo exhibition,<Ggondae>, Ho Bin Kim held in 2022 at Horanggasy Glass Polygon. In it, he plays around with fabricated truth as a satirical tool to criticize the absurdity behind “Ggondae.” For this exhibition, he introduces a new painting piece and a theory that merges all of physical aspect of the objects displayed in the space to further emphasize the absurdity. As a person who has both of his feet in a world of literature and visual art, Ho Bin has been researching it’s relationship to one another. In the process, Ho Bin borrows ideas from total of three philosophers: Jorge. J.E. Gracia, Jacques Derrida, and Ferdinand de Saussure.

From the book written by Gracia, “Painting Borges,” Ho Bin derives what it means for art interpreting literature and vice versa. For literature, text is made of word signs composed of script and utterances. For visual art, image signs are made of visual form and mental images. With both literature and visual art composed of word and image signs, Ho Bin comes up with a generous premise that there isn’t a black and white distinction between the two since both world uses alignment of either words or images in specific location and order to display to the perceiver. This perceiver stands in between the interpretandum(the object or element that is being interpreted) and interpretation(the act or process of understanding or explaining the meaning of that object or element).

With the distinction between literature and visual art essentially gone, the perceiver can work as an audience that can look at an interpretandum to derive an interpretation, which leads to an understanding.

This understanding can lead its own interpretandumm and derive another interpretation, which leads to a new understanding. This chain will be endlessly “deffered,” or continued according to Derrida. Derrida notes that because signs can never be fully summon forth what they mean, they can only be defined through addition of signs consisting of two components: signifiers and signified, which is an ideology borrowed from Saussure’s signifier-signified theory. This theory suggests that all signs are made up of signifier (physical or perceptible form of the sign, such as a word, sound, or image) and signified (the concept, meaning, or idea associated with the sign).

By combining three philosophies together, Ho Bin, attempts to add 4 signifiers/interpretandum (video, installation, painting, and mural) to the original signifier (text), to create distinct signified in order to create an unique interpretation. In the process, the original story and meaning is lost - eventually also impacting the original text in a way people perceive it, thus creating this infinite loop of interpretation. This emphasizes and transcends a simple notion that there cannot be ultimate or fixed meaning that can be fully present due to continual process of “deferral.” This allows us to accept the multiplicity of meanings rather than seeking a singular and definitive meaning, ultimately emphasizing vagueness of truth and absurdity of Ggondaes for thinking that the truth they know is the only truth.