Indoor sculpture garden

Seung Yul Oh: Bogle Bogle
The New Dowse
13 February - 30 May 2010

Seung Yul Oh first attracted attention at Elam in the early 2000s as an amazingly drawer of whimsical fairytale cartoons that combined the saccharine with the intestinal and excretory - as well as being a maker of flowing resin sculpture with bizarre bubbly, pockmarked warty textures. Since then his work has become less organic and less process-oriented and much more industrial, with an impeccable finish and delicate pastel colouration.

The current sculptural installation at The New Dowse features capsule-like forms that are akin to ‘kinder eggs’ that have taken on appetising confectionary hues. These are a variation of the work he recently exhibited in Te Papa’s sculpture terrace and Starkwhite, that were ‘egg-birds’. Bogle Bogle is more theatrical and staged in three connected rooms, with three small inquisitive rats made of resin that sometimes balance on the ‘egg’ tops.

There are also some large vertical matchsticks, an abstract headless elephant made of curved arch forms, to one side a 3D sculpture of a cube covered with a white sheet, and several brightly coloured cubes, these being drawn orthographic forms that have had their sides intensely coloured and then their shapes cut out of flat metal sheets, on stands so they remain vertically positioned on the floor.

I tend to prefer this artist’s nastier and messier earlier work for here he seems to be chasing Michael Parekowhai. Yet this show is not bland or too cute. It has a pattern that intrigues too.

First of all the doubled-over title. Is it a portmanteau word that blends bugle with ogle? Is it like the display, something that has an oblique logic? To do with binaries perhaps?

I say that because looking at the sculptural elements, there are match heads (symbols perhaps for revelatory epiphanies?) that look like the giant capsules, two sorts of cube (flat and with body) and two sorts of colour (pastel and saturated). Plus two varieties of spectator: rats and living humans.

What can one make of it? The show seems to be about passivity and action and the agency of the gallery visitor. Something about thinking as an activity? The rats and people seem to indicate curiosity, the capsules props to be ingested, the matches lit (ideas maybe?), while the elephant is memory and the sheet covered cube the hidden past. The cut-out Platonic forms can be interpreted as hypothetical actions, while the 3D ones are actions of profound consequence.

Bogle Bogle is a buoyant, entertaining show, an indoor, walk-through ‘sculpture garden’ that holds up well against the fiddly architectural trimmings of the New Dowse arches, fake walls and doorways. It is worth investigating on your way down the corridor to Bill Viola.

Enlarged folk art

Seung Yul Oh: Oddooki
Starkwhite.
6 July - 25 July 2009

Seung Yul Oh is currently presenting in the large downstairs Starkwhite space five interactive sculptures that he recently exhibited in Te Papa’s Sculpture Terrace. They look like huge toys based on abstracted birds and have been repainted, having suffered some brutal wear and tear from the visiting public. The chips and striations are now gone. They look impeccable.

These pristine oval forms, with their stubby beaks and delicate wings in slight relief, are a sort of synthesis between Eskimo art and Kinder Eggs (or Russian Nesting Dolls). They shine like creamy porcelain and have glossy coloured bases of different hues. Each one has a mechanism hidden inside that with different sorts of movement will make sounds. One tinkles, another clangs, a third a grinding rumble. They vary. Each is unique.

In their bases are weights of sandy ballast so that they cannot topple over. They can be swung, spun, swivelled or gently prodded, rocked and softly shaken – preferably several ‘birds’ at once.

The Starkwhite Press Release says the wind managed to rock (and ‘play’) these sculptures but even in Wellington and on the sixth floor of Te Papa, that is hard to imagine. They seem too heavy and too streamlined.

Perhaps they swayed a little. However it is a pity the paint surface isn’t much tougher so that Aucklanders could really tumble them about to create an aural and kinetic cacophony. It would be good for such folk-arty objects to belie their serene, somewhat cute, appearance, to startle their admirers; make them less like excessively sweet contemplative objects and more raucous or vulgar – less like twittering sparrows and more like cawing crows.

Squishy and Squelchy

Seung Yul Oh: Daradaradarada
Starkwhite, Auckland
1 February - 1 March 2008

Seung Yul Oh’s last show at Starkwhite was a stimulating mixture of painting, sculpture, and installation and this one is the same but less packed – and now with video. Again he uses the central columns in Starkwhite’s large downstairs space to good effect. This time instead of wrapping a band of polythene around the two of them and putting a fan inside he has imagined they are limestone outcrops in an underground cave, and turned them into stalactites or whopper candles. He has covered them with descending dribbles of pale yellow wax. And covered the windows with wax, diffusing the light from the street.

The real stars of this show though are his paintings. Oh is a consummate draughtsperson who knows how to entertain his audience and create giggles. Maybe he overdoes it. Some of the varied group of paintings in the large space seem as if he has got tired and changed his mind: the early ‘abstract’ stages of underpainting are left without the fine lined ‘hairy’ drawing he uses to create contours. Others are large horizontal rectangles that look like double-page spreads in magazines or comics. They show lumpy asteroids covered top and underneath with vegetation-coated rocky outcrops and lots of cute little wiggling goldfish, winking woodpeckers and popping bubbles.

His best paintings though are smaller, without wildlife, and intestinal. They play off the edges of vertical stretchers so that lines and circles of translucent viscera accentuate the painting shape. He seems to be taking the mickey out of Clement Greenberg who being anti –illusionist, emphasised maintaining the stretcher shape. The squirming, crawling shapes are subtly matched with tonally related colours that bring out the beautifully squishy gut forms. Oddly these gems are in the Starkwhite office, on the right, behind John McCormack’s desk. These works are the show’s highlights so don’t miss them.

The other exhibits up to a point are interesting too, like the plasma screens of rice, lollies and sand going backwards and forwards in and out of a funnel, or the big lightbox illuminating vinyl shapes, or the marble-like floor sculptures, but you soon tire of them. The best of the paintings however will hold your attention a long time. They’re brilliant.