LOST HORIZON
Art First Gallery, London
6. Feb - 22. Mar 14, 2014
The dream of a perfect society certainly didn’t originate with Thomas More’s famous work of 1516. He just gave it another name: Utopia. It’s a dream that is probably as old a mankind itself and it has gone by many names. In one of my works for this exhibition I’ve listed 39, but there are certainly more. They can be found in many different cultures, contexts and periods – expressed in forms as diverse as ancient myths, religions, political ideologies, fiction, Hollywood movies, and the virtual realities of cyberspace.
Probably one reason why I’m interested in exploring this theme now is that a few dozen miles north of where I’ve been making my works lies a monstrous nation committed to Utopia: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Its leaders and people are stubbornly persisting in the most absurdly ruinous and barbaric attempt to realize Shangri-La. This State exposes the nightmarish consequences for a people when its leaders believe in the possibility of producing a society that is timeless, absolute, pure, perfect and idealized. In North Korea, perhaps, the communist dream is clung to as a kind of angry and impotent resistance to the visible collapse of what communism once promised, but as the latest wave of scholarship emphasizes, we shouldn’t assume that North Korea is any longer subscribing to a Marxist-Leninist or even Stalinist Utopian agenda in anything other than name. Instead, it is more accurate to describe the DPRK as a fascistic regime committed to the maintenance of a troubling fantasy: the purity and superiority of the Korean race.
I approached the complex theme of ‘Utopia’ tangentially and elliptically, using as my focus the movie Lost Horizon, and roping in along the way other points of reference from literature and art, East and West. I’ve also used this occasion to try out some new styles and techniques, including working on hanji – Korean mulberry paper – and mounting works in East Asian formats, such as the hanging-scroll and the folding ‘concertina’ album. In these ways I reference the fact that I’ve been living in Korea for a while. I also seem to have an aversion to horizons. My works are certainly not meant to offer any kind of prognosis, and I also don’t intend to be ironic or cynical. I really believe in Utopia, but I’m just not expecting to find it anywhere out there any time soon. Maybe if I can clean the mirror of my mind sufficiently or open the ‘eye of the heart’ I’ll come to see that all along it’s been right here and right now.
