Kijong Zin at Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves, ZKM, Karlsruhe
Kijong Zin’s piece at Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves — On Air, 2006 – is demented in the best possible sense of the word. It is a masterpiece of absurdism. At first sight it is not especially prepossessing, simply consist of three television monitors depicting what appear to be slightly weird versions of American television such as CNN and the Discovery Channel. The wonder of the work begins when one notices a little door to the side of the monitors. One walks through the door into a darkened room in which there are webcams pointing at extremely grungy mechanised tableaux. What is interesting is that these junk-heap concoctions look fairly good on the television monitors outside (VIDEO CLIP).
The work is about simulation, of course, and the trashiness of American television projected into every corner of the earth like a electronic disease. Many of the works in the Thermocline exhibition contemplate globalised American capitalism from a peculiarly Asian perspective finding it both vulgar and irresistible in almost equal measure. Interestingly, Zin’s take on American culture is not so different from American artists such as Paul McCarthy or Jason Rhoades.
Pingback by Light And Magic « Wet Casements — October 12, 2008 @ 10:43 am