Hong Won-Seok: project

2011 Jeju-Gasirl “Captain Hong’s Art Taxi Project”, Jeju

Daejeon Museum of Art holds an exhibition that

reviews art projects conducted outside studios,

and four artists take part in it. They each create

their work considering the public using a different

method. One of them, Hong Won-seok carried

out a peculiar project that used painting, a genre

he has originally pursued, and video concurrently.

He is originally a painter. From 2006, he has

made paintings by endlessly reconstructing his

memories with his father and grandfather, who

were taxi drivers when he was young, and with

his experiences as an ambulance driver in the

army and as a driver to making a living. To him,

driving is a vague memory and a means to earn

money in life. At the same time, it is an element

that makes him feel uneasy and the only passage

that allows him to escape from uneasiness. While

he described his experiences in his early pieces

with his imagination, the pieces that he has made

since 2010 contain social issues. Standing in

front of real painful situations, he has focused on

shedding light on the dark impulses inherent in

society.

2011 Jeju-Gasirl Art Taxi project, Jeju Free-Taxi interview

His piece “Light Pollution,” shows his curiosity

about why the McDonald’s chain leaves its lights

on for 24 hours, while another piece, “Yongsan

Mystery,” shows a destroyed site in Yongsan, which

he sketched with tension. He speaks about the

events breaking out in our lives as a witness of his

time.

Such a change in his work is not a simple flow.

It is based on the experiences that he obtained

through affluence and frustration during the 21st

century. The taxi driver, which he thought as the

best occupation during his childhood, came to

be regarded as an insignificant job. As he went

through the bubble phenomenon of our society

and the fall of the ar t market as an ar tist, he

came to see through the system that actuates

social desires, and to more keenly recognize the

problems in which individuals are victimized by

the system. He is an artist who communicates

with people using the medium of driving. In the

aspect in which he makes his works not by the

knowledge learned with his brain but by the

knowledge learned with his body, his progress is

persuasive.

■ Lee Seul-bi_Reporter of Wolganmisool

2011 Yeong Cheon project idea sketch

2011 Yeong Cheon project, Art Car 'wind'

2011 Yeong Cheon project, iphone interview

2011 Yeong Cheon project, Art Car 'wind' Room

QR codes are attached to treasured items of participants who experienced art taxi and free taxi. Through the QR codes viewers can see videos containing stories of each item by using their smart phone. The Captain Hong's Art Taxi Project engenders interaction and relationship with others. This is an unpredictable situation which generates diverse narratives through the art taxi project.