Digital technology shares something in common with traditional EastAsian thinking. East Asian philosophy prioritizes nature as a cyclical andaccommodating force, the complementary nature of things, and the ambiguity ofvalues—all of which are embodied in traditional East Asian painting. “X: TheKorean Beauty,” which is inspired by these philosophical origins, utilizes cutting-edgeXR technology and techniques from theater, photography, costume design, andcosmetics to present a work of media art in which the past overlaps with thepresent.
The digital artwork displayed in this exhibition gives new life tofour paintings—Portrait of a Beauty, Scenery on Dano Day, Two Lovers Under the Moon, and Secret Meeting Under the Moon—by ShinYun-bok, a painter of the Joseon dynasty (mid-18th to early 19th century), inthe form of multi-dimensional screens. The artwork’s content, as suggested bythe title, is held up by two pillars: “X” and “beauty:” the former refers toart’s pluralistic and comprehensive nature, while the latter addresses thequestion of human identity.
The letter X, in mathematics, is a spatial coordinate and synonymfor “extension.” The use of this letter in the title implies the merging oftechnology and art as well as the fact that the digital artwork is the outcomeof a collaboration between artist and engineer. In fact, the creation andinstallation of the artwork involved the participation of experts from manyareas, including an expert in special visual effects, photographer, clothingdesigner, makeup artist, and metaverse builder. The staging of Shin’s paintingswith era-appropriate clothing and makeup, dramatic plot structure, andphotographs of the paintings’ sculptural/formative elements as a work ofaugmented reality results in a composite artwork that pushes the boundaries ofwhat we define as “art” through the cooperation of disparate fields.
The other pillar of this digital artwork is Shin’s paintings. Hisbest-known painting, Portrait of a Beauty, is still popular today forits realistic portrayal of the beauty standard of the day. Just as importantly,it is evaluated as one of the best-executed works of portrait art in Korean arthistory. The paintings that served as the inspiration for this digital artworkare all included in Album of GenrePaintings by Shin Yun-bok, a collection of Shin’s artworks whose key motifsare the birth of the modern civic consciousness and the cityscapes of Seoul.“X: The Korean Beauty” aims to be an exhibition that makes Shin’s uniqueformative language resonant and memorable for museumgoers in a space ofaugmented reality.
The beauties inShin’s paintings are individuals who do not need to see the world throughsomeone else’s eyes. They are independent people who are capable of deftlymoving back and forth between the cultural spheres of past and present. Inother words, the identity of the artworks is not brought to light through theirconcrete characteristics: rather, this exhibition explores the in-betweenness—the liminal spaces or state that implies dynamics of separation,transition—that exist between them. X :The Korean Beauty hopes to give museumgoers an experience of the paintings’diverse subjects in their sociohistorical context as well as an opportunity tothink about the relationships, both forcible and voluntary, that exist betweenthem and the world.