Deserted Spaces or Spaces of the Heart
Jinyoug Kim (Art Critic, Academy of Philosophy)
The photographs of Gun Young Lee show spaces. These spaces are nameless. It's not that they did not have a name to start with, but that somewhere along the line, they lost the name that they once had. But upon a closer look, we find that the reason for their namelessness is not just that they lost the name that they had. Rather, they are turning into something that cannot yet be called any definite name. In other words, the various spaces within Lee's frames are all spaces in process - spaces of boundaries, which are neither this nor that, or both this and that. What, then are the names of these spaces in process, spaces of boundaries? And what message can be derived from seeking a name for these spaces in these photos?
All of Lee's photos show spaces that have been deserted. They were once used for a certain purpose, but having lost their use and been cast away, no one is there any more. An abandoned salt field now occupied by tall weeds swaying in the wind, the playing field of a closed school once filled with children running around freely, the site of an old lake where fish used to abound now a parched up piece of land under the bright sun after a dam was built and all the water was discharged... Looking at the images of these deserted spaces, what we receive before anything else, as happens with photos of New Topographics, are the ruins of nature, developed and used to human purpose and abandoned once the purpose has been served, that is, the destruction of nature by civilization's selfishness. In this aspect, the deserted spaces of Lee are the wounded faces of nature.
Nevertheless, the message being conveyed through the spaces of ruins in Lee's photos goes beyond a criticism of civilization's violence against nature. Looking in carefully, we see that while the deserted spaces captured in his photos are barren and in ruins, they are also each a scene where a certain event is taking place. Be it an abandoned parking lot with tall lights standing lonesomely, a mountain valley turned into an illegal junkyard, or a barren ground scattered with golf balls, the dark ruins of Lee contain not only the wounded faces of nature, but also faces of a different kind that are growing out of those wounds. They can be the tall weeds in the abandoned salt field, grass coming out of the dried up land once a lake, or the trees that have grown thickly around a telegraph pole. In short, the photographic spaces of Lee are twofold, where on the one hand, there is the ravaged nature, and on the other hand, there is the return of nature to the ravages. This twofold image brings to light the self-circulating vitality of nature, which no matter how badly it may have been wounded by civilization, will work its way through those wounds and reawaken life. In this sense, the deserted spaces of Lee are not spaces of ruins but rather spaces of creation.
But there are spaces of yet another kind. Perhaps the actual reason behind Lee's search through the outskirts of cities and local areas for deserted scenes, these are spaces that are not apparent within the photographic image, but rather aesthetic. The viewer makes associations based on the intersecting points of the spaces of ruins and the spaces of creation, or the overlapping of these spaces, which generates an aesthetic place of a third kind. This special place cannot be called by the name of civilization or that of nature. Spaces of this kind are nameless, atopian. If these spaces of a third kind which Lee tries to capture with his camera and present to the viewers through a twofold image are atopian and cannot be named in any way, where could these spaces be? Could they be spaces of the heart that he is searching for and hopes to reach? If spaces of our hearts in these times are those of chaos, disintegrated by countless information and occupied by overflowing desires, the same must be true with Lee. One day, quite by accident, he would have remembered a space of the heart now deprived, wanted to find it again, and hence captured in a frame a nameless space where ruins and creation coexisted. In this sense, the deserted spaces of Lee may be secret spaces of the heart that only he knows of. But then again, who does not have a special space of the heart of their own? If we are brought to stop and look the deserted spaces of Gun Young Lee, it may be that the spaces of creation within the ruins are transporting us to our very own spaces of the heart.
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