The story must go on. The story cannot be stopped. The reason the kids, putting to bed, keep pestering their mother and father for telling stories until they fall asleep, is they know by instinct the fact the story must go on. The story of Christ goes on in church and so does of Buddha in temple. The story of Greco-Roman myth spreads over time and space; and the same old love stories keep rejuvenated in different soap operas. Hong Sung-dam’s reconstruction of the Northeast Asian folklore with the visual language of today is for the national obligation that the story should not be stopped. However westernized and modernized the taste and sensibility of Koreans, in case of forgetting the archetype of the national folklore, they would end up losing communal identity. Story is soul and spirit. Only the people who pass on the story can expect hopeful future. Granted the vicissitudes of history make the story erased and worn out here and there, the story must be restored by the imagination of its own. The story has autogenous power to heal. This self-generating power to heal of our story is called ‘Northeast Asian Imagination’ by Hong Sung-dam. His painting is the 21stversion of national folklore reconstructed by that imagination. Cultural archetype of Northeast Asia, as is well known, has its roots in shamanism. Since the advent of more organized and rational religion, and the development of knowledge and technology based on the belief in reason, shamanism has become treatedas something to be wiping off like dirt. Shamanism, however, is a humane and peacemaking activity, ultimately aiming for accordance of man and the world, and for liberation from oppression and pain. This deep and warm kind of humanism is the most precious and positive energy we must regain in these times. According to by Prof. Kim Yol-kyu (Senior Director, Academia Koreana of Keimyung University), "shamanism is what makes the repressed desire and frustrated instinct discharged" and is said to have power to heal the mental and inner wound on an individual and the community. Moreover, because "all the nature such as mountain, river and tree is a materialized image of god and the trace of the soul of god," shamanism could reinforce the harmonious relationship between man and natural environment, man and the supernatural power. Besides, for the fact that deity of shamanism is polytheistic and animistic, and there can’t be found the patriarchal absolute authority of monotheism in that, it can be said to be contributory even to feminism. Hong Sung-dam’s works, embodied this feature and value of mutual prosperitywith visual language of today and singular imagination of the artist, try to settle the pain, trouble and feud of our time in the symbols like Baridegi, universe tree, paper money, the Big Dipper, lotus flower, knot. It leads us through the cathartic experience that could make clean the innermost dirt of us as in some exorcist ritual. Hong Sung-dam’s is an ambitious work on this kind of Northeast Asian humanism, substantiated by the artist’s singular imagination. The scene of the picture, except the baby in the center, could be divided into two parts between left story and right one. In the right story, red cloaked figure at the far left is a fascist. The numerous knives on him imply exorcist ritual. From the fascist the viscera are coming down with a missile as if the exorcism works. Beside the fascist, a scarecrow with mechanical organs makes copulation with a dead pig. (Pig and other animal images came from the wall paintings describing meat storage in the tombs of ancient Goguryeo.) The world dreamily sprawling out from the head of the scarecrow is that of weird monsters. On the right of the painting stands a gigantic statue of a goddess with rice. The leaping out tiger, from the face of the goddess, is an animal traditionally regarded as a representative of the world of Ying. On the hand of the goddess is rice composed of human skulls, and from the womb of her is gushing forth the water of life. A naked woman beside the goddess is in travail of giving birth of a baby, and from the head of the baby spreads out a dream of epic drama of life and death, love and strife. In the meeting place of the dream of scarecrow and the baby spread green pastures, and baby Baridegi is lying there. According to the shaman’s song ‘Baridegi’, when the princess Baridegi, the seventh daughter of king O-gwi and queen Gil-dae of Bul-la kingdom was deserted, her eyes, nose and mouth were swarming with insects. The insects swarming on the body of the baby now reflect the legend. Baridegi, lying at the point where the fundamental and natural flow of life is bumping into the flow of civilization and technology! This painting tells us that it is time to give a chance to the old Northeast Asian Imagination which could embrace life and death in one big circle and could revivify even the wastes of the civilization with energy of life, when all the ideology and value that have been attempting to divide the world into good and evil with relentless severity leaving us at a dead end. As the shaman’s song ‘Baridegi’tells us, the love and passion of Baridegi who ventured all the hardships to save her parents who had abandoned her, is the real energy to save the civilization. Hong Sung-dam’s another large-scale painting looks over the aspects of recent civilization, by introducing cyber world and avatar culture. World Trade Center at the far left side of the scene is a representative image of conflict and tragedy of the 21st century. Under that located a three-legged incense burner; to get that internet game characters are fighting one another. Beside that appear naked men and women commingling with one another: from the buttocks of a naked body comes an airplane which would destroy World Trade Center. Candlelight rallies in red follow that and thefearful eyes and Gollum from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ are seen near the center of the scene. On the right of the scene, among North Korean women, holding bizarre artificial-flowers and praising their own ‘cyber world’ at the time of North and South Korea Summit Meeting, was expressed the artist’s painful memory of water torture under the authoritarian regimes of the past. At the upper right part of the picture, Seotaiji and Boys singing on the Labor Party building in Cheorwon, are rendered in small-scale but impressively. Hallucinatory feature of the traditional costumes of Korea, China and Japan on the background shows that exact following of the tradition can not reanimate the old energy. Shamanism tradition of today rather seems to get new life and energy in the avatar or cyber culture. What make massive candlelight vigils possible at an instant is the power of mobile telephone and internet. Avatar characters in here and there of the picture blur the boundary between physical world and cyber world, and lead the development of new civilization and that could be a meaningful prophetic message. The Abundant love and energy devoted to and may not be exhausted after finishing these two grand pieces. The lingering force may make the main motifs into separate pieces. The god series like , , are results of that: is a very beautiful painting of a rice bowl in the center hemmed by a peculiar flower plant composed of magnolia and lotus flower. Rice, for Koreans cannot be mere meal; holy birds and flowers centering around the rice may mean the nature’s solemn command that life and living itself must be cherished. The artist, being deeply immersed in the Northeast Asian identity and shamanism, might not be able to disregard the Red Devils’ cheering in World Cup games and candlelight rallies in Gwanghwamun. These are for him the huge performance and exorcism of shaman ‘incarnated’ in sensitivity and sensibility of this age. Paintings on this subject are also shown in this exhibition. ‘Avatar I~IV’ series focus on the cheering of the Red Devils in strict order with scarves among them the ghost-like blue figures in arouse even an uncanny feeling. Proud and positive images as Red Devils may be, all the constituents cannot be good and great somebody. Even he is a ghost, if he became a part of Red Devils, he cannot be overwhelmed by the massive power of positiveness. That is the moment the Red Devils become avatars of the power. This Red Devils phenomenon, unlike English soccer hooligan, when they gather all the participants become positive beings, may be a hopeful sign for the future carried to us by the great shaman of our nation, a messianic shaman who has indicated better way at every turn of our history. The landscape of candlelight rallies titled may give an impression of abstract painting at first glance. The orderliness epitomizes the intimacy with nonviolence and peace of the candlelight vigils. This is said to bethe first painting for the artist to use a photo for the work and the photo itself has a clearimage with nothing to add or take out. Looking at the seeding plate of tiny kindlers and imagining of the spread like wildfire must be an exhilarating experience. The artist for all his life may have been regarding his paintings as that kind of kindlers. As a man gone through torture and incarceration in the past military regime for sending painting series to North Korea, he may have prayedthat his art could be spread to a vast sea of mutual prosperity like the candlelight of peace. He may have prayed that the national stories he has tried to restore could be spread byhis paintings. This exhibition is a place to offer the prayer once more with a creative determination.
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