‘We are conducting aesthetic research using data accumulated from the points of contact between the virtual world of games and the offline culture of Bungae.’
Artist: 윤제원 / Yoon Je Won
Artistic style: Art that focuses on and explores the relationship between virtuality and reality
Biggest artistic influence: Gerhard Richter
Studio: Seoul and Incheon
Formerly, Yoon was a top ranking e-sports player of the international online game (WOW) as well as a leading name in Korea’s gaming community. He managed the largest online game community as a user manager. Gaming, being something that is something he loves and enjoys (“game equals life”), Yoon came to the conclusion that there was some inconsistency between his personal life and career. Based on his personal experiences and philosophy, and combining his love for art and gaming, Yoon describes his creative process as ‘playing the art’ (instead of doing, or creating), and thought his art he explores ‘virtuality and reality, cyberspace and game’ something which he feels overcomes the concept of empiricism (the idea that learning comes solely from personal experience i.e. touching a flame or something hot and understanding that you shouldn’t do that again because it hurts, or something along those lines, I’m sure you get the idea). I love this concept!
Yoon is interested in how the audience accepts the cyberspacitic (this is a new word for me) image/information via media platforms, and the audience’s attitude towards its visualisation – giving him the focus on the relationship between virtuality and reality. Yoon has (and continues to) carry out aesthetic research using the empirical data gained from:
- online cultures, such as a virtual space (game)
- online communities
- from real-life cultures such as ‘Bungae’*
Through deep research in this area, he is diversifying the forms of the artworks such as painting, digital media (art game), art theory (exhibition producing) and working as an independent curator.
The artist showed his works globally via ‘zkm_gameplay. The next level (ZKM_Karlsruhe, Germany)’, ‘Games & Politics (Athens Conservatoire, Greece)’, ‘Translation of difference [차이의 번역] (Korean Cultural Centre in Hong Kong, Hong Kong)’, ‘Glitch & Visual art <Pandemic> (Daegu Art Factory, Korea)’, and ‘ZER01NE DAY (ZER01NE/Hyundai Motors)’. From 2017, he produced a series of sole exhibitions regarding gameplay mechanisms such as ‘Play Art~: Customizing (2017)’, ‘Pixel∙Line∙Touch(2019)’, ‘Into World(2020)’, ‘Lost in Translation (Producer: Ju Ok Kim, 2022)’ and curatorial projects regarding virtuality and games including ‘INTRO: relationship between virtuality and reality [가상과 현실의 역학관계] (2017)’, ‘Memory device [기억장치] – Virtual memory (2019)’, and ‘A lonely pay – a cursed play [고독한 플레이어 蠱毒한 플레이어] (2021)’.
*‘Bungae’ means a meeting among the online community without prior arrangement.
“If I were to try and explain my work in one sentence, it would be an ‘equivalence of reality and virtual reality’ and various ‘phenomenological glimpses’ because of it in modern society. I’m using MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) to express it in my way and gain righteousness as an artist. It starts from the text and is expressed in visual languages such as painting, photography, installation and new media so that I could express philosophical thoughts and norms which are included in modern society.”
Who are your biggest artistic influences?
Gerhard Richter.
I had a chance to visit his special exhibition when I was a university student. His works showed the possibility for the art student who just started to create his own art world that various types of works could be set in the same context. My works vary in the same discourse in my art world, with analogue media (painting and installation), digital media (art games), art theory (exhibition production) and so on.
What are your studios like?
I can say I use my home as a studio or live in my studio.
Sometimes I get inspiration from games or am supported by several residencies or support programmes that are run by international corporations or public cultural trusts including Daegu Art Factory, Incheon Art Platform, and Zero One from Hyundai Motor Group. This makes me change my surroundings and meet new people to widen my experience.
What is your dream project?
Currently, I’m undergoing a project named ‘Research on transplanting art games into online platform’ supported by ARKO (Art Council Korea). This art game is in a digital game format which is able to play and exhibit in the gallery, as well as downloading online. It explores the ways of presenting, sharing and owning the online-based arts on the audiences’ own devices. Also, I’m using the art studio in Incheon, supported by the Incheon Art Platform. Since the studio is massive, I would like to create the huge works that I always dreamt of, such as ‘Virtual Infinite Landscape’ which is a sequel of ‘Virtual Utopia Landscape’ (watercolour on arches (cold press_356g), 119x170cm, 2017-2020), a mixture of painting and installation within both virtual and real situations. It is about joining virtual reality with their own avatars and able to walk around that virtual reality, I’m using my own photos that I took, and landscape photos that I’ve never been in, researching the past and present of Incheon, and trying to mix them with my imagination.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received as an artist?
The arts is non-verbal communication, translating verbal language into visual language. I always remind myself the question ‘I think the arts are like this, but what do you think?’ If I don’t communicate, it would be a delusion, but if I communicate, it would be an artistic illusion.
How do you overcome creative blocks?
I play a single game which helps me to organise my own thinking when it became complicated. Focusing on the problem-solving that I faced in the game provides me catharsis and gives me different ways to solve it while looking into other players’ play, which gives me a way to escape from fixed thinking and get more creative thinking, especially when I play new games. Someone might think I’m just playing games in a room, but I think it is as same as self-discipline. It is a pataphysics, finding the way of communication via disconnection.
Do you have a favourite piece of art that you’ve created?
I have affection for all of my work since all process of my work has different modes of working because it is a process of replacing mutually researched text into visual language and I experience various reaction during the process. But a highlight of my career would be ‘Sunshine_Art Game (Ver. PC/Android)_2017’, which is the first art game in South Korea. It was invited to the Game Jam series in Germany in 2017. My work was also invited to ‘Gr8 ArtGames, Game Science Centre, Berlin, Germany, 2018’, ‘QUO VADIS’ and ‘International Games and Playful Media Festival: A MAZE, Urban Spress, Berlin, Germany, 2018’. Some of the art games, including my work, were invited to ‘Games & Politics, Athens Conservatoire, Athens, Greece, 2018’ and ‘ZKM_Karlsruhe’, one of the most renowned media art museums in Germany, as a part of the exhibition and archive of ‘zkm_gameplay.the next level’ (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany). It was an honour to be inside of the precious experience.
Furthermore, this work is precious to me because I didn’t have any exhibition schedule in 2016, except for one, and I failed to arrange any other exhibitions. I was depressed, and I was not in the mood of enjoying the year-end party and came back to my flat, and found out about this project. The deadline was midnight of December 31st, and I submitted my project only a few minutes before the deadline, but eventually, it became a huge milestone in my career.
Do you have any tips for other artists who are just starting out?
Adopt a ‘never say die attitude’. Also you will need consistent research to translate your non-verbal thinking and imagination into visual language. Also, submit every fair or open call as much as you can. A little possibility counts for the artist’s career, and through others’ feedback, you will get more possibilities to improve your world. And even if you failed to be selected, someone will see your portfolio and with that repentance, at some point, people will recognize you, some will get interested in your work and it will make a virtuous circle. For instance, KAL would be a part of my cycle.
What’s been the most challenging thing you’ve created?
During the pandemic, the interest towards meta verse has raised and finally the game became a part of art in 2022. But when I start my research about ‘virtual reality and reality, game and cyber space’ in early 2000, it was difficult to meet someone who are interested in the same area, and even sometimes I was regarded as a weirdo, and the game was regarded as a bad, additive thing like alcohol and cigarette which made me face several rejections. It was a hard time to persuade people that the game is not a bad thing.
I’m not trying to emphasise my credit to make the game art but I hope I could make artwork having more understanding of both the game and art. I’m not forcing someone who does not into the game to understand it as much as I am, but I think there would be a difference between someone who has understanding in some field and someone who is not. Therefore, I would like to make a discourse about cyberspace that we are facing in this era with my colleagues in the art world, even though I’m not with the former colleagues that used to fight with the dragons in the game in the past.
What’s the best reaction someone has had to your artwork?
I face several different reactions because of different ways of creating my work, it has pros and cons. But if I make an example with some pieces that I am bringing to London, the ‘Pixel, Line, Touch’ series (2018~) would be the most theoretically advanced works of mine. Apart from my intention, they are the most works that I’ve received the sales enquiries. And I’m very thankful for that because the minimum unit of collecting, and I think being collected would be safer form in terms of keeping the artworks, rather than the artist keeping them. (To Faye: there is more Korean text in this question, but I haven’t managed to translate it all since it’s a bit irrelevant to the question. But feel free to get in touch with me if you need an English version of the text.)
What’s been the most surprising thing about being an artist?
There are some points that I found okay, especially if that is not admitted or got interesting by the public. I think the development of artists’ vision would be to keep researching those points until it gets interested the public. I think the artist is one of the occupations that can touch and deal with the episteme of the modern era.
What do you hope people take away from your artwork?
I hope my work could express and have meanings of various layers and three-dimensional with the main plot (personal interest and material) and subplot (way of expression). I made both plots could be interactive and expressive enough to show them to the audience. I put as much as I could about “This is what I think an art” within my main and subplot, but I don’t want it to have remained as a monologue. It is more like, ‘I think this is an art, but what do you think about it?’ I hope to open a cross of thoughts, which eventually leads me to communicate with the audience.
Faye’s comment
Stepping back a moment from Yoon’s art itself, I just wanted to add, in conclusion, that I absolutely love every single one of his answers to my questions – I’ve found that interviews via emails are difficult because you don’t always get a sense of the person themselves, and their character – but I didn’t feel that way here. Instead, I find the artist to be an incredibly articulate, eloquent and interesting person, and I’m left with a sense of feeling that he has a brilliant mind, full of wonderful thoughts and ideas.
Website: https://blog.naver.com/jewonyoon
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yoon_jewon/
ZER01NE site: JeWon Yoon – ZER01NE