written by Sung-Ho Kim, an art critic
Playing life -self examination from inherent unconsciousness
Summing up her works on the subtile which appeared in solo exhibition are as follows: 'Sympathy 2004', 'Being music composition 2008',
'Life is like playing instrument 2008' 'Drawing for sonata 2011', 'Adagio in sonata 2014', 'Inherent signs 2017'.
Except recent works of Inherent signs series, it seems that she plasticly pursued discourse like human-unconsciousness-desire on the
subject of human from the first solo exhibition to the present. She opined that she has kept working continuously on the subject of
human from 2000 in her artist note on the subtile of 'Adagio in sonata' 2014. They are concretely based on sensitive sympathy and
pity originated from life such as feminity, nude, war, relation, unconscious island on the inside, philosophies for life and so on.
These consciousness fully based on above mentioned, in her opinion, were expressed info the truth of joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure
pushed in unconsciousness in her own works.
It seems like self-examination that latent speculations in unconsciousness wrigglingly knocks the surface layer of consciousness.
From 2008 to 2018 she has scrutinized this self-examination on the subject of 'Life is like playing instrument' on the basis of thinking
that life is just same as playing musical instrument.
Inherent signs- Nonverval 'acoustic image' and the return of représentation de chose in unconsciousness
Artist Young-Soo Kim's recent works Inherent signs series are the works that black line drawing such as ancient hieroglyphics loudly
take their places like a text of secret document on abstract expressionistic basis that paint trickling and overlapping is freely
spread out. English character or Korean text stood once in a while on a part of painting plane in a way of collage or stencil and/or
were really written by her. Sometimes they are legible but most of them are illegible. Perhaps they are meaningless in reading.
Because text on her painting plane is presented just like unreadable image than presented text's own function which is subject to
readability. Her works let us greatly recollect another term of image acoustique(=acoustic image) that a semiologist, F. D. Saussure
already designated 'signifiant(記標)‘. In the meaning of signifiant that they are presented in the sound of parole or in the image
like trace, they are well-matched conceptions with her recent works that dispersed in signifiant or illegible chaîne acoustique and
also with her previous works visualized playing music.
We know that those signifiants nearly doesn't exist without ‘signifié(記意)’ As if F. D. Saussure compared that a combination of
signifiant and signifié can not be cut into separation, its existence is like the front and back of a paper. This relation between
both signifiant and signifié is a mutual prerequisite relation. If so where the hell is signifié in her works that signifiant
slopped around?
In Freud's opinion it is under acting in the state of latent sign (corporate body of signifiant and signifié unverbalized) in the
depths of unconsciousness. Because while the world of consciousness is the very world of language, the world of unconsciousness is
the world of sign for Freud. At this level her paintings reach forward to a mass corporate body of signifiant and signifié that are
latent in the surface layer of unconsciousness continuously delaying to be a language that acting in the stratum of consciousness
with signifiants and signifiés completely combined.
As Freud regarded the world of consciousness as a 'formation du mot (言語構成体)' and the world of unconsciousness as a 'formation de
l'object (事物構成体)', the texts illegible and with illegibility non sensed that show in her works is not the conscious world of
language that signifiant and signifié correspond thoroughly. But they exist as only signs that signifiant stands in the front.
Those texts are individualized 'parole' erupted from her unconsciousness than grammaticized(文法化的) 'langue' in society.
In Freud's opinion they are not a formation du mot formed in consciousness but formation de l'objet floating in unconsciousness.
That's it! Inherent signs of her recent works subject float on the border between consciousness and unconsciousness, uttering from
unconsciousness with no standing before to the world of consciousness.
Her Inherent signs are understood thus. To begin with they summon unconsciousness into the real world as mentioned that "paintings
are products made by 'me when I am acting' at the moment of painting and 'me when I am in unconsciousness' together" in artist
statement 2010, and joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure latent in human unconsciousness drag out pathos through a work of art in her
artist note 2018. Because 'in her early days she moved around often and had to make friends a little locking herself behind her
good persona', 'the experience that she has grown up' become a basis that had suppressed instinct in unconsciousness and basic
desires introspected in her creation of paintings. Her paintings inspired by Franz Kline's calligraphic abstract, Christopher Wool's
and Mel Bochner's senseless sense chain are overlapped by abstract expressionistic color layer, black, and thick text that is not a
text and meaningless texts babbling on about just like a monologue.
They are generated from unconsciousness like suppressed instinct and are floating on the border between consciousness and
unconsciousness. According to Freud because instinct exists on the border between mind and body it is not a consciousness but an
unconsciousness by itself. If so how is instinct grasped? The instinct that can never become the object of consciousness becomes
the object of consciousness through only a representation that represents instinct. By the way instinct consists of only a
représentation de chose (事物表象) in the world of unconsciousness and the suppression prohibits that représentation de chose
can be translated into a représentation de mot(言語表象) in the world of consciousness.
For her 'Inherent signs' are not to obey these suppression of language and are 'acoustic images' that hold a representation de
chose(refuses to be a language) floated off from suppressed unconsciousness instinct and is a existence as a parole at the same
time. " Intention towards desire expressed in line or stroke, memory and emotional color works as a tool that demolish the border
between signifiant and signifié through scattered signs in the state of parole " she said.
That is, texts amongst picture plane are no longer langue but sign of parole and are those which float on the border between
consciousness and unconsciousness represented from latent unconsciousness as a signifiant that loses signifié.
That's it. Représentations de chose in her works are not those things that opposed to become a langue from suppression and are
those which are called as the suppressed, I. e. signs as signifiants, signs as parole by itself.
In Kant's meaning Young-Soo Kim holds due calling of 'the very original looks theirselves' in the state that infuses life into
représentation suppressed even though it is just the image whose représentation is false and it is only an indication of abyss
of things theirselves that get stained by subjective occupation.