Installation view of 《Referential》 © HITE Collection
HITE
Collection presents a special exhibition 《Referential》 on view through July 11. The exhibition examines the points of
mutual reference between photography and sculpture within today’s visual
environment, where digital media and AI-driven data proliferate, blurring the
boundaries between material and immaterial, original and copy. It explores how
the two mediums participate in each other’s understanding and move across their
respective borders.
The
exhibition takes as its point of departure the idea that photography and
sculpture share a similar fate within today’s image-saturated visual culture.
As the datafication of art becomes increasingly commonplace, both media are
confronted with challenges to their modes of spatiotemporal existence and
materiality.
Installation view of 《Referential》 © HITE Collection
Photography
is no longer simply an imprint of light, but has become closer to an image
drawn through data, while sculpture, too, often begins as data, temporarily
materializes in reality, and then returns once again to data.
Within
the history of visual culture, even the defining qualities of representation
and reproduction — once considered the great strengths of both media — are now
being challenged as they become entangled with digital images and data.
To
question the relationship between photography and sculpture is therefore to
consider how the visual culture of the digital age relates to traditional
media, while paying attention to the reciprocal influences that emerge within
established artistic disciplines.
Installation view of 《Referential》 © HITE Collection
Particularly
within today’s online environment, where the singularity of the “here and now”
has been dismantled, art is no longer bound to a fixed place or moment, and its
mode of presence has consequently transformed. Photography and sculpture,
increasingly subjected to processes of reproduction, transmission, and
alteration, now share the fate of images that continuously mutate and circulate
through processes of datafication.
In other
words, as the modes of existence of media continue to change, photography and
sculpture move across each other’s boundaries, generating visual experiences in
which materiality and immateriality, originality and reproduction, coexist in
unstable and overlapping forms.
Participating
Artists: Eve Kwak, Kyoungtae Kim, KDK, Juree Kim, Chorong An, Kai Oh,
Jeisung Oh, Ahyeon Ryu, Eun Chun
