Exhibition view of ‘Frame’ / Image courtesy of Dats Museum of Art
The exhibition ‘Frame’ was on show at Datz Museum of Art until 27 February. Through installation works, this exhibition explored the meaning of the frame, the final theme in three stories about place and space, ‘Point (Home) – Line (On the Boundary) – Plane (Frame)’. The photographer Chu Myungduc explored ‘Point’ along the theme of home, while the photographer Young Suh and poet Katie Peterson considered ‘line’ by capturing a journey of change that left the first place of home. For the final theme, 'Plane', the installation artist Chen Daigoang (hereinafter Chen) presented a frame as a fluid boundary that separates inside and outside. He exercised autonomy within the given space and constructed installations made of wood. Cheon drew the entire sketch in his head and built the work from a certain point in the space. The warped structure was completed using the properties of thin wood, which is reminiscent of those found in nature, such as in mountains, canyons, and the topography of the land, as well as of the curves of the widening and narrowing shaping and movement of the path. The artist intended it to become an evocative space in which viewers could walk beneath the structure and contemplate it alone. During installation, he worked alone for two weeks without an assistant, trying not to think about anything other than hammering wood and driving screws. Cheon noted, ‘The shape I wanted to create was already there before I devised it, and it was already contained within the elasticity of the material I had in my hand. I work as the space instructs me, and I nail as the materials guide me’.