you press the button (2016)

Martin Schwenk

Translated from the original German

Eunu is interested in the medium of photography. What we see here, however, are not photographs themselves, but rather the instruments traditionally used to produce them. As Ms. Groß has already noted, he was concerned with the question of why the people he observed here take photographs. Certainly, it is to remember, to preserve something. Yet there is another aspect: the question of selection. Which situation do they grant such significance that they feel compelled to photograph it?

Compared to the past, the threshold has become relatively low; nevertheless, this question touches upon something essential in Eunu’s work.

It may be helpful here to describe another work that also relates to photography. Eunu dissolves the pigments of a photograph printed on plastic-based photographic paper using a solvent. This process gives him the possibility to alter the image through smearing and removal—essentially a kind of manual Photoshop, free from the constraints of predefined digital parameters. The motif itself plays almost no role; rather, it is the material and technical possibility of transformation that matters. Through this method of manipulation, Eunu interrogates each photograph individually: What does it express? What happens if I allow this area to blur, or remove something there? How does its aesthetic presence change?

If we now turn to the sculpture Better Weather, we notice that he has chosen a material that stands in direct opposition to photography: cement. Cement is used to construct buildings. It is durable and suitable for outdoor use.

This act of estrangement produces a unified surface, a unified image. There is no longer any mixture of materials; all plastic, rubber, and metal components have been transformed into cement. The sculpture appears almost to grow out of its pedestal. The cameras and their lenses—devices originally designed to capture light—have become cement forms, petrified masses.

Cement does not merely reproduce form; it deforms it. The entire installation appears encrusted. What was once portable has become immobile. One might say that, sculpturally, Eunu does what photography traditionally does: he freezes time.

Yet what seems even more decisive in his work is the effect of estrangement itself. Perhaps this relates to his artistic education in Korea—I cannot say for certain. However, the question of the significance of things for one’s own artistic practice, and the meaning of one’s own actions, plays a central role in artistic education. Everything is questioned. Everything is subjected to examination. Everything can become a problem. Eunhyung confronted these questions—and, it seems, often enough despised them.

By formally and technically estranging the object, he attempts to strip it of its original meaning, or to assign it a new one, thereby creating the freedom necessary for his artistic work.