Hand in Motion
Park Jisoo (Editor-in-Chief, VOSTOK)
Jean Genet, a French playwright and poet, completes a book while frequenting the atelier of the Italian sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti for 4 years from 1954 to 1958. The book is entitled L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti. The most interesting scene from the book is when Genet admires the sculptural work of Giacometti by carefully touching and feeling around it. The image of Genet, perceiving the sculpture made out of constant hand motions of groping, touching, attaching and detaching, invokes a peculiar resonance.
Genet, looking back on the traces of the sculptor left on the sculpture through his hands, exclaims the following : “ And so- Finally!- My hand comes to experience and see.”
While watching Eun Chun’s solo exhibition The Guide, I am also reminded of Jean Genet’s hand and Giacometti’s sculpture. Probably because of the exhibited work inspired by a blind boy experiencing the world with his hands and a piece of sculpture bequeathed by his father. The artist captures with the camera, the sharp thorn associated from the sensitive fingertip of the boy palpating Braille and the plaster mass left to him by the deceased father. The boy’s hand in motion seeking to visualize the shape and the father’s hand in motion to illustrate the shape, take after one another, as they both build their own world with hands. The thorn and plaster in the photo remain immobile, but paradoxically, connotate the hands in busy motion. Unlike what the title suggests, ‘ Time of Lying Sculptor ’ depicting the father in the same context, also turns towards the moment of vivacious life. Here, Eun’s hand holding a camera to trace the past movements of the father and Genet’s hand in motion also bear resemblance to one another.
- Photos of Remembrance Series, The Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 23, 2017