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, 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.
2012 Changdong-graphy, National Museum of Contemporary Art Changdong Art Studio Gallery, Seoul
2012 Community Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Gyeonggi
2012 The Creative Attitude of that 'Distance', Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon
2012 The Creative Attitude of that 'Distance', Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon
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