Artist Im Su-sik's 'Chaekgado'
L
LeVide 르비드
Category
- Photographic works
- Mid-career writer
- Mixed materials
Bookshelf, Another Portrait Reflecting the Soul
The 'Chaekgado' series is a work that reconstructs Chaekgado, a court painting style of the late Joseon Dynasty, using photographs of modern people's bookshelves.
Originally, Chaekgado was a traditional painting that symbolized scholarship, knowledge, and an attitude toward life through books and stationery. The artist brought this ancient form into the present day, starting the work with the idea that a person's bookshelf can be another portrait revealing their tastes, individuality, and the trajectory of their life.
When I first photographed my own bookshelf and faced the image, I realized that the bookshelf in the picture could serve as a portrait, taking the place of my face. Since then, I have visited the libraries of various people to document the books they have read, collected, and left behind.
A bookshelf is not simply a piece of furniture where books are placed.
In that place, a person’s lifespan, direction of thought, intellectual desires, tastes, and memories accumulate. Some books reveal thoughts that have lingered, while others show questions yet to be answered. Therefore, a study is a deeply private space where a person’s inner self is quietly revealed.
I am more drawn to bookshelves that bear the traces of real life than to well-organized and staged ones. An unadorned study holds the person's face. The arrangement of books, worn spines, empty spaces, and stacked papers and objects all become small clues that make up that person's world.
While 'Chaekgado' borrows the format of traditional Chaekgado, it is not a work that merely repeats images of the past. Through the modern medium of photography, artist Lim Soo-sik documents today's bookshelves and observes how an individual's knowledge and life are accumulated within them. If traditional Chaekgado embodied the ideal of a life close to books, Lim Soo-sik's Chaekgado reveals the ways in which people living today construct themselves through books and objects.
A bookshelf is a place that records the present, and at the same time, a mirror reflecting a person's inner self. Through this work, I hope that viewers will look at another person's bookshelf and imagine their life, and furthermore, look back at their own bookshelf and their own reflection.
By Lim Su-sik_Chaekgado 460_Goethe House, Frankfurt, Germany_Hand stitching on printed Hanji_80x60cm_2023
Im Su-sik_Chaekgado044-2s Artist Hong Sun-tae Bookshelf_Hand stitching on printed Hanji_50cm×35cm_2023
Im Su-sik_Chaekgado 044-3s Artist Hong Sun-tae Bookshelf_Hand stitching on printed Hanji_50cm×35cm_2023
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