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“I thought the game was over for this project the moment I saw ‘LG Transparent OLED TV.’”
Architect Seo Eul-ho, the second son of artist Seo Se-ok, said. In collaboration with LG Electronics, the headline partner of this ‘Freeze Seoul 2024’, he organized a media exhibition with his older brother, artist Seo Do-ho, that reinterpreted his father Seo Se-ok’s paintings. The title of the exhibition is . Do-ho Seo, a contemporary artist who is invited to biennales around the world, created an animation of his father’s work, and Eul-ho Seo, CEO of Seo Architex, who completed his master’s degree in architecture at Harvard University and was in charge of the architectural design of Hyundai Motor Studio, designed the space. The display that was the star of this exhibition held at the LG Electronics booth was the ‘LG Transparent OLED TV’, which has never been shown to the public a few times. Not only has it not been officially sold yet, but it is also the first time it has been shown in Korea.
“I have worked with my brother several times on projects such as the ‘niche hotel’ for the Gwangju Biennale and the ‘blueprint’ for the architecture exhibition at the Venice Biennale. So now I know just by looking at your eyes. The moment I saw the LG transparent OLED TV, my brother thought of the idea of an animation, and I thought of directing the space we are in now. “As we shouted ‘call’ to each other, everything went smoothly.”
Installation view of LG Electronics booth at ‘Freeze Seoul 2024’.
The deciding factor was the direction of the layers. On the front of the façade of the space, a huge translucent cloth printed with a work from artist Seo Se-ok’s ‘People’ series is hung, and behind it, eight ‘LG Transparent OLED TVs’ and eight ‘LG OLED EVO’s are installed behind it to create a ‘layer’. I completed ‘Layer Behind Layer Behind Layer’. There is only one reason why triple layers were possible. This is because between the translucent fabric and the OLED evo with infinite contrast ratio, there was the ‘LG Transparent OLED TV’. When you actually see the scene, you realize that Seo Eul-ho’s words, “My ears perked up at the uniqueness of a digital canvas with a transparent screen,” are not the slightest exaggeration. The sight of the black ink spreading black on the screen of the OLED evo, which expresses black ink exceptionally well, and the white image of the transparent screen of the ‘LG Transparent OLED TV’ overlapping on the front, is literally amazing.
The form of stacking another display in front of a display also reminds us of the operating principle of ink-and-wash painting explained by CEO Eul-ho Seo. “Western paintings are painted by stretching an opaque canvas to fit a wooden frame, applying gesso and adding oil paint. It is possible to control the brush when drawing. Also, if you make a mistake, you can just paint over it with another color. However, once it is completed, the layers of the process are not visible. My father’s ink-and-wash works are different. “Ink is a battle between two media: ink and rice paper, and we can tell where and how the artist applied and removed the brush just by looking at the painting.” Ink is not complete the moment a line is drawn with a brush. The ink that touches the paper spreads according to the light and shade, and this spreading completes the layer of time. The way oil paintings work, which are thickly painted but cannot see the layers, is different from that of ink, which permeates the paper and becomes one, but reveals layers of time depending on the light and shade. So perhaps a transparent display superimposed on a vivid OLED display may be the medium that best conveys the way ink spreads on rice paper sensuously. The visual effects made possible by the transparent display were a shock to his older brother, writer Seo Do-ho. In an interview, author Seo said, “It was my first time seeing a transparent OLED TV in a showroom. In particular, watching the process of changing from opaque mode to transparent mode gave me the feeling that a two-dimensional plane was changing into a three-dimensional space.” There are also good reviews of this exhibition, in which artist Seo Se-ok’s works were interpreted by his two sons with the help of cutting-edge technology. According to the Korea Economic Daily, Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LACMA), who visited the booth on the opening day, said, “I couldn’t believe it when I saw with my own eyes what kind of new perspective is created when cutting-edge technology meets great art.”
Brothers Seo Do-ho (left) and Seo Eul-ho standing next to LG transparent OLED TV.
At this point, we need to talk about Seo Do-ho’s animation for a moment. The moving canvas of ‘LG OLED EVO’, which is made by stacking eight displays, features various people and various types of houses painted by artist Seo Se-ok. What is touching is the scene where a person is born inside a person. The child born inside a person in the shape of a house takes off the mold and becomes separated. At first glance, that scene reminds me of Seo Do-ho’s masterpiece, ‘A House within a House within a House.’ “My father thought the movement of the brush was very important. The movement of this brush itself was part of my father’s work. “My older brother, artist Do-ho Seo, ‘re-imagined’ the very movement of the brush that contained the ‘energy saeng-dong’ that my father mentioned when he was alive.” CEO Seo Eul-ho said. “Mariette Westermann, director of the Guggenheim, also came and spoke at length about my father’s world of work. We talked about transparency and creating layers using a transparent canvas.”
At the very back, behind the three-layered video installation work, a documentary video showing artist Seo Se-ok’s work was shown on a large media wall composed of 24 OLED signages, and on the left and right side walls were ‘Happy Rain’ (1976), Seven original paintings, including ‘The Pedestrian’ (1978), were displayed. “I saw in an interview that writer Seo Do-ho chose ‘The Passenger’ as one of his favorite works. “It’s a work I really like, too.” After a long talk with CEO Seo Eul-ho, I took a moment to look at the ‘Pedestrian’ hanging in the exhibition hall. A human figure standing in the middle of the four corners appeared to be moving. When I thought about it again, Seo Se-ok’s works were still, but they always seemed to be moving. In his picture book published during his lifetime, artist Seo Se-ok left these words to the children who were assumed to be the book’s readers. “One day, I drew a dot on a piece of paper. When I connected the dots sideways, it became a line. How exciting it was that the line died and came back to life. Then, I poured paint on it, scratched it with a dry skewer-like brush, and even drew on it with a brush soaked in water. I was able to put various thoughts and feelings into the picture. I thought this was an exhilarating life. This is how my paintings were born.” The ‘exhilaration’ that Artist Seo spoke of seemed to have been revived in the garb of technology. →