허진 Hurjin

Reawakening and Stabbing the World with Painting

- The Cycle of Nature Appeared in Hur Jin’s Serial Work “Anonymous Man”

By Kim Baik-kyun, Professor of Chung Ang University, Korean Painting

Since the 1990 solo exhibition, Hur Jin, through his serial work “Anonymous Man,” has consistently explored a reflection of human absurdity and human life, based fundamentally on a belief in humans and human love, namely humanity. The themes and subject matters Hur Jin has primarily taken are wandering anonymous men with no identity, unnamed nomadic animals in a primitive state, social corruption and structural contradictions. A criticism of society and civilization, his work seeks to attain a non-civilized world. Hur Jin still remains as a humanist and has beliefs in human beings, commitments and responsibilities as one of intellectuals. Hur always faces up to reality, which is a departure point of his work. What he went through in the course of Korea’s rapid economic growth were the explosion of social contradictions, political conflicts and clashes between the haves and have-nots. He concludes that all kinds of systematic, structural contradictions of society are derived from human desires. He thus refuses the system of social order, expressing his rejection of human desires through his serial work “Anonymous Man”. As an alternative to overcome human desires, Hur presents the stance of so-called nomadic animals. That is to recover the type of man before human civilizations and, as part of nature like animals, to live a life based on the principles of nature. If any artificial system of order emerges in human society, we humans fall to the world of death. His view of the world represented by “Anonymous Man The Cycle of Ecology” is mostly critical of human civilizations. Hur’s critical idea of civilizations is closely associated with the Laozi and Zhuangzi’s views of nature. Laozi presents Tao(or Dao) as the principle of existence of ten thousand things and Te(or De) as its operation. By doing it, he asserts the revival of Taote(morals) as the measure of value of all things. This conception of morals differs from that of Confucianism. Laozi’s concept of morals means following the law of the cycle of the universe, namely the cycle of nature that is not invested with any artificial values. The central conceptions of Laozi’s philosophy are ziran(nature) and wuwei(doing nothing contrary to nature). While the ziran is the best value sought by Laozi, the wuwei is the fundamental way or the principle of behaviors presented by Laozi to accomplish its central value. For Laozi, the notion of ziran does not refer to the natural world but the state of existence of things. Therefore, Laozi’s concern lies in the state of existence of human beings, not nature. What Hur Jin strives to ultimately achieve through his painting is the returning of man to nature. Under this situation, man could live peacefully without depending on fame and wealth. The ideal he wishes to state through the notion of nomadic animal or nomadic man is to attain a society with no conflicts and contradictions. That is the society embodying Laozi’s nature. The universal meaning of nature Laozi remarks refers to a state in which the people ruled do not feel the forces of a ruler directly. “When some accomplishments are made, people often regard them the results of their own endeavors” (Chapter 17, “Laozi”) The best ruler does not force the people to do something and in no way boast off his benefits and favors. Nature means living freely and leisurely, rather than living in a primitive way. To retrieve humanity based on the principle of nature is the objective of Hur’s criticism of society and the motive of his work. The world we see from the civilized point of view is a stuffed one whose order is given by our existing value system. His floating images are a manifestation of daily objects existing as they are without asserting their peculiar stance and situation. That is an attempt to view daily items such as cellular phone, cork extractor, key and thumbtack as they are, without considering their values. A key is seen as it is, not as its value for example. What he depicts is the peace of our mind we reach when we see them as they are in a state of disorder.

In nature animals do not manipulate anything. They are living, following their instincts given by nature. Accordingly, any conflicts do not occur among them. Hur Jin refers to that as a nomadic trait. In his work the objects are placed in disorder, which is the state of lacking order, rather than deviating from the principle of nature. These things lie in a variety of relations, overlap with each other and form the cycle of their own. Although Hur’s work is obviously based on Eastern thought, especially the view of cycle, his working style does not directly linked to the tradition of the East. His work is deviated from the features which are often regarded as an Oriental style. That is derived from his endless exploration of the new and in a sense, is a reaction against infusing already institutionalized, blind values. While studying at Seoul National University, he became skeptical about the law and principle of Eastern painting and its abstract ideal, which was represented by the spirituality of ink such as addressing brushstrokes and arranging blank spaces. That was too metaphysical for an energetic young artist to follow blindly. He was then almost suffocating due to excessive idealization of and enormous discourse on ink painting. An intense discussion about how to achieve identity and how to return to the Eastern spirit was going on but everyone was ambiguous in putting that in practice. What opened his eyes then were the lectures on Eastern studies by Doall Kim Yong-ok. While hearing his lectures, Hur realized that painting is more than doing a painting. As a painting is a manifestation of the artist’s subjective perception, we first debate on how the artist feels and recognizes. Because a painting is a reflection of the artist’s awareness through the comprehensiveness of life, an integrated way of thinking is required. As a result, he became aware of the importance of culture above all else and came to know of what he should do first for the practice of his art. By doing it, he was able to depart from Eastern metaphysical discourses and then began portraying complex, multifarious aspects of modern society in an unreserved, unpolished manner. The world he noticed appeared so complex that Hur at last realized that it could not be expounded and deciphered by a single integrated principle. 

 human being is inevitably in a network of complicated relations. Hur Jin seems to conclude that such manifoldness of human life conditions cannot be represented by a single painting and thus he presents diverse formative ways to convey such intricate emotions. Accordingly, his work remains tremendously narrative, engenders innumerable stories and amplifies sensibilities. Looks of modern men he depicts reflect the conflicts and contradictions of human society in which people deceive or being deceived by each other. He sees that the more our life becomes surrounded by the media, the more we remain alienated and our communication is severed paradoxically. The media is surely for communication but if that is used for any artificial purpose, that communication becomes disrupted or distorted. Recently, he presents large-scale paintings whose subject matters are the personalities of Korean history. In a TV advertisement he incidentally noticed a look of Ahn Junggeun, Korean independence activist. His imagery in the TV commercial is exploited by a comprador capitalist, dedicating to misinterpreting the meaning of comprador capital as something positive. Where is the truth? He asks again. Its answer is, of course, in the question itself. He underlines the history of humans, human civilization and the history of destroying nature. Hur Jin asserts that we humans could retrieve our humanity only when we turn all values to the worthless. Hur Jin is a stabber. Through his painting he stabs our blunt sensibilities which have contributed to justifying inhumanity and fixed values. His blade, however, is not to destruct the world but to create social reconciliation. As he becomes indulged in the values of Taoism, he gradually puts more focuses on the landscape. Through his travel to Geomun-do and Baik-do islands, he deepens his thought on landscape and Eastern values as well. We need to watch which changes will emerge in his art after adoption of the landscape, namely mountain-and-water painting.