“Garden of Memes” introduces contemporary artists who embody their own world of work using the methodology of imitation and cloning under the theme of “memes,” the digital generation’s visual characters. A meme is easy to make, easy to share, and intuitive for anyone to recognize, but they are somewhat meaningless. It has become a symbol of the changing world in the digital image communication era and a type of everyday conceptualism. This attitude to overthrow realistic norms and to break down the cultural and artistic classes, in fact, resembles the legacy of Dadaism and pop art in contemporary art. “Garden of Memes” focuses on the way contemporary artists repossess images through revelation and imagination in an era with platforms where anyone can easily create images and communicate with each other. This attempt will be an opportunity to look at how the artistic language of those who freely cross the boundaries of everyday life without being bound by art forms or aesthetic rhetoric gains uniqueness in the post-Internet era, while also looking at the impact of meme politics on contemporary visual culture.
Jaewon Kang
Jaewon Kang is interested in futuristic sculptures. Based on the idea that the functions inside a 3D program will influence the principles of constructing the sculpture of reality, Kang continues to create works with interest in the sense of being shaped by digital sculpture methods. He produced the materiality of the sculpture by adding lighting, environment, and materials to polygons sculpted using a 3D program in 2017. Starting with this work, Kang has recently made sculptures with a sense of motion, movement, and shapes by adding functions inside a 3D program to basic three-dimensional shapes such as spheres and cylinders. The finished sculptures (obj: 3d file) are sent in various forms, including digital images, videos, 3D printing, inflatable sculptures, and aluminum.
- Seoul
- http://www.jaewonkang.kr
Swoosh
“Swoosh” is the title of this work and the logo of one of the world’s best-known brands. With its original meaning of “the sound produced by a sudden rush of air or liquid,” this word makes us think about the craze for a certain brand’s limited-edition syndrome, which has been spreading like crazy on social media recently, and how the phenomenon relates to our lives. The secular desire for material goods goes beyond passion to madness and eventually the icon functions as a contemporary religious figure. Like memes that are easily reproduced and spread, sculptures in the digital world are also easily reproduced or easily transformed into various forms with simple technology.
In the 3D program, Jaewon Kang, who has created sculptures with a sense of motion or speed by adding deformation functions to basic three-dimensional shapes such as spheres and cylinders, discovered the current shape through a chance process while experimenting with different shapes using spheres. As soon as the subconscious form is expressed unconsciously, he realized that he and his work also coexist in the phenomenon of memes. The gigantic inflatable sculpture, Swoosh, looks like a solid piece of metal at first glance, but it is made of thin fabric cut and attached. Its shape is maintained by internal air pressure, and disappears as soon as the device is turned off. This work implies the inextricable relationship between memes and contemporary art, material idolatry, and nihilism in the age of infinitely expanded image communication.
- Inflatable
- 5000 × 7960 × 1850 mm
- 2021
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Jaewon Kang, Swoosh
