A Pleasant Diary Of Bang Jeong Ah
Park Soo Jin(Former Art Space Seoul Gallery Curator)
Bang, Jeong Ah paints everyday events happening in her surroundings on the canvas like she writes a diary. When we first see her pictures, we grin at the absurd situation of the pictures, but in the end her pictures win the sympathy of spectators. Her rapid strokes of make the pictures seem funny, but the funny situations make us feel bitter and sad, because we realize the funny is the daily life. Bang collects daily happenings, records them on canvas and shows the pictures. The monitors daily life through her own camera lens. When she catches the moments of weariness and languidness, she draws them immediately on the canvas just like collecting insects.
Through her pictures we encounter the other sides of daily life weariness, social neglects, and the desire for deviations. Bang pictures dark sides of life and society mostly from her past. But in this exhibition she shows us more about her own story and expands her concerns to nature and the environment. This may be because she learned how to take a cheerful view of life, and be patient and tolerant through her marriage and the delivery of her baby during that time.
Her pictures awaken in us the importance of our surroundings more than that of the center. She may not picture the lives of women with the intention of acting as a feminist. But her pictures bring the social irrationality and distortion against women to light more satisfactorily than any political speeches.
The subject of this exhibition is "female and nature". Female and nature can be bound in one category. They take charge of production and fertilization of the world. They are the motive power of the world. Bang's pictures have no connection with intentional feminism, nervous temperament, or a tragic life. But they successfully show the sad and bright side of daily life, in a cool and collected manner. What she shows are bitterly beautiful lives and the wisdom of how to compromise in life. This is the reason why we like Bang's pictures. She says " I am not concerned with vague and ideal matters. I simply wish my pictures be interesting."
In this exhibition we can see many new pictures, light and nimble. The characters in the pictures come closer to the spectators. In some pictures the backgrounds disappear. Bang has the talent of stopping the moment by emphasizing actions and motions. Her talents urge her to make cubic articles. The cubic articles are another expression of her desire to come closer to the spectators.
Big voices do not always move the world. We encounter small things not in the ideal world but in the daily life and they make a big story. In Bang's paintings, we see the realities of life and the power which moves the world. An optimistic and affirmative view of life brins us a 'hope for tomorrow'. If we find negative sides in Bang's pictures, paradoxically they are the processes leading to the affirmative world and seeds of hope.
