Jewyo Rhii – "Dear My Love, Anti-Capitalist"
20. 2. – 28. 3. 2015
20. 2. – 28. 3. 2015
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» deutsche version
Rhii built this “lecture machine” (a term that may or may not have to do with the “teaching machine”, the grand metaphor of the cultural studies theorist Gayatri Spivak) based on the insight that much of that which she produces as part of the art system does not become part of the reified and simple-rational representation routines. One has the impression as if she were gradually feeling her way to a new speaker position, to a new level of self-empowerment in relation to the attributions and impositions made in regard to the production of a Korean artist with an international radius of reception.
A drawing already shown in earlier exhibitions depicts a couple, maybe the one from the letter, inscribed in the radius of a patterned skirt and above it a reproduced accusation apparently targeting Rhii from the outside: “You don’t produce anything.” Other, more proven signification instruments of found objects and built structures are also present in the new exhibition.
» deutsche version
Rhii built this “lecture machine” (a term that may or may not have to do with the “teaching machine”, the grand metaphor of the cultural studies theorist Gayatri Spivak) based on the insight that much of that which she produces as part of the art system does not become part of the reified and simple-rational representation routines. One has the impression as if she were gradually feeling her way to a new speaker position, to a new level of self-empowerment in relation to the attributions and impositions made in regard to the production of a Korean artist with an international radius of reception.
A drawing already shown in earlier exhibitions depicts a couple, maybe the one from the letter, inscribed in the radius of a patterned skirt and above it a reproduced accusation apparently targeting Rhii from the outside: “You don’t produce anything.” Other, more proven signification instruments of found objects and built structures are also present in the new exhibition.
Drawings with factual or future-oriented designations of time (“5 week 2 months” or “2 more weeks”) amount to something like a playful yet seriously future-oriented recasting of On Kawara’s “Date paintings”, in which the artist for decades painted dates on neutral canvases, thus leaving behind thousands of “day works” as a sign of life. On Jewyo Rhii’s sheets, which are hatched in a far less prosaic way and stylize figures by means of omissions, a different impression prevails: That they are transitory sketches and notes, or secret messages scribbled in hiding that address the vainly loved vis-à-vis, who is becoming ever more abstract, and – upon returning to the Han River – seek the meager chances of a reunion, of an existential “date” in the depths of the future subjunctive.
Clemens Krümmel