M70 Reality and Utterance
On Founding ‘Reality and Utterance’ (1980)
Reality and Utterance (Hyeonsil gwa Bareon) were a dissident collective of artists and theorists who were active in defining a new modern art in South Korea at a time of serious political instability which followed the assassination of President Park Chung-hee. Founded in 1979, during the struggle for democracy, the group were part of a grass-roots cultural movement later called minjung misul (people’s art). Reality and Utterance believed in using art to express political messages, hence the word ‘utterance’. They were anti-colonial, pro-democracy and keen to promote a collective, nationalist art that was rooted in the social conditions of everyday life, which gave them the word ‘reality’. Through silkscreens, photography, paintings, posters and banners focusing on themes such as urban development and the Korean War, they challenged the dominance of tansaekhwa – the Korean school of monochrome abstract painting which, they argued, was merely a weak imitation of Western abstraction.
Reality and Utterance published their manifesto on the opening page of the catalogue that accompanied their first exhibition, which was held in Seoul in October 1980 at the Munyejinhungwon Art Gallery. The show was closed in a matter of hours due to complaints from an abstract painter exhibiting in the same gallery. Despite this inauspicious beginning, the group went on to hold further exhibitions throughout the 1980s and become a forceful voice in modern Korean art whose influence can still be felt today: the leading cultural critic and curator Sung Wan-kyung (b. 1944), for example, is one of the group’s former members.
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We harbor great discontent and doubt about all kinds of today’s established artistic forms and also continue to wander in the midst of our own contradictions. This self-awareness about reality urges us to return to primal and essential questions, such as what meanings art truly carries, what artists’ responsibilities are, and how we should fulfil them. It also presses us to reaffirm our desire to seek new directions.
In hindsight, established art, whether it is conservative and traditional or avant-garde and experimental, either flatters the philistine tastes of the leisure class or insists on highbrow conceptual plays by closing the space of art to the outside; the result is art that alienates and quarantines the true reality of selves and neighbors, leading even to its own inability to discover the inner truths of isolated individuals. Furthermore, the so-called art scene has been confounded by power struggles and interests that are far from artistic principles and diligence. And by participating in such partisan conflicts knowingly and unknowingly, many in this art world have debased themselves and contributed to polluting the general artistic landscape, including art education. Most of us ourselves have believed that the best attitude is for each of us to agonize in solitude. Even in our encounters with colleagues, we have been unable to escape our own biases and habits, and by doing so, we wonder if we have given up on possibilities for shared resolution of problems and advancement.
It is the first intention of our gathering that we reflect seriously on all of this. Furthermore, it will be our soaring goal to restore the true and active functions of art and to promote collaborative work and theorization in order to form an original and solid artistic ideology.
As a group we pledge our conviction that to attain this goal, we will play a creative role in the development of art for a new time by bringing together all those who share our resolve, including artists and critics, exchanging frank conversations amongst ourselves, deepening our consciousness, and shaping a sense of alliance.
We believe, therefore, that our group’s thesis, ‘Reality and Utterance,’ contains in it the following questions with regard to the direction we must seek from now on:
- What is reality? For artists, does reality end with internal coherence within art, or does it expand to the urgency of recharging outside of art? –
and from these questions to the question of re-examining the meaning of reality as well as the encounter between reality and the artist’s awareness. - How do we view and feel reality? –
deepening of the angle of reality consciousness and of critical consciousness; hopes for relationships among observations of reality rooted in the self, the reality of neighbors, historical reality, and spatial reality, for the restoration of alienated human beings, and for a positive reality of the future. - What does utterance mean? How is utterance accomplished? Who can utter, and toward what is the utterance directed? For whom and by whom is the utterance done? What is the relationship between the subjects and the recipients of the utterance?
- What should the methods of utterance be? How, where, and under the expectation of what kind of efficiency should it be done? –
the creativity of the methods of utterance; critical overcoming of the established methods of expression and reception; and appropriateness and mutual operation between reality and utterance.
From the premise that these questions must be ceaselessly pursued within the thesis of ‘Reality and Utterance,’ our group believes that while enriching substance through expanded conversations, our individual creativities, through continued practice and theory, will converge to develop into the formation of a shared principle.
We seek to form a group with members who wholeheartedly agree with this goal.