Where An Eagle Meets Fish

An arm squeezed in between walls, letters made from sugar melting slowly on the glass door, a face carved of wood hanging from the eaves – Nestled in the traditional architecture, there is a body of art. Behind these works autumn is ripe with its rich colors, coloring the landscape with the rhythm of visual poesy. Imagining the accumulated time and the loneliness of architecture that it must have passed through history close to eternity, mystifies its existence. Yet, its vitality is still present, and the building is breathing everywhere. An exotic gaze falls upon this timelessness of the landscape. What one calls history and tradition are embedded in the body of architecture, playing together with the forms and materials of the contemporary world. 鳶飛魚躍. It’s like an ancient Confucius recipe for understanding nature is described: a kite flies above the vast sky, while fish jumps around in the pond. Written in the “Classic of Poetry (Shijing)¹”, which is known as the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, it is said that a kite flying into the sky reveals the principle of the sky and that a fish playing in a pond fulfills the principle of earth. Humans between the sky and earth play the role of observing the mechanism of interconnected nature. The saying implies learning the spirit of life from the righteous appearance of kites lounging high in the sky, and the philosophy of living from carp cutting through the current. Markers of these anthropocosmic gestures can be found throughout <Where an eagle meets fish>, a group exhibition at the Nokwoodang Culture and Arts Foundation² in Haenam, South Korea. The notion of harmonizing was incorporated in the exhibition title, which unfolds another possibility for an emancipatory meeting point to dismantle dichotomies. As Nikolai Gümbel has shown in his video installation <World Dream The World>, this middle ground is where collaborative companionship evolves. Standing between poetry and the actual world. The video imagery contains a blurred time concept by the figure’s continuous wandering in cities and nature. Likewise, most other works were made from found objects and surrounding nature. The artist René Stiegler made the work <Gamekeeper> with abandoned bamboo trees. The work fuses the European hunting culture that is easily found in rural areas with the exposed telephone poles and wires that are part of the urban landscape in Korea. The contrasting tension between tradition and progression, security and instability, and order and chaos are all melted into one work. The exhibition followed the Nokwoodang Culture and Arts Foundation’s program that scheduled a four-day trip in Seoul, including a visit to the Sculptural Department at Seoul National University, a five-day stay in Haenam with workshops such as Makgeolli (traditional Korean rice wine) making, a calligraphy workshop by a local Meister, and a Buddhist temple stay. Based on this rich experience of how the Nokwoodang Foundation is related to poetry and nature, the exhibition developed in a Naturalistic process as well – Because it toppled the hierarchies of materials, the disruption of binaries of nature and culture, tradition and contemporaneity, materiality and immateriality – with all their artistic and sociocultural implications. ¹ It is one of the Five Classics, a compilation of ancient Chinese poems. It is said that there were originally 3,000 pieces, but it was reduced to 305 pieces by Confucius. According to『 Shiji』, Confucius selected 311 pieces, but only the titles of six of them are conveyed. ² The Nokwoodang Culture and Arts Foundation is located in Haenam, South Korea, and was established to preserve historical sites and artifacts that have been kept since the mid-15th century of the Joseon Dynasty. Among them, those related to the poet Gosan Yun Seon-do and the painter Gongjae Yoon Du-seo are the most renowned. Nokwoodang is also the name of the house where these historical figures lived and means a place where green rain blows. It got its name because of the sound of bamboo swaying in the wind in the backyard. More information: http://www.nokwoo.co.kr/