MEMENTO MORI

Remember Death, MEMENTO MORI

Jeong-hwa Cho, Professor of Sangmyung University

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

The above text was written on the wall where Yisak Choi was holding his solo exhibition Memento Mori. It was the outcry of King Solomon in the twilight years of his life—the words of someone who had enjoyed all the power and wealth of the world. As we can imagine through these passages, Choi’s work is based on the existential contemplation of ‘life’ and ‘death.’

An embodiment of this contemplation process was his ‘Memento Mori’ in 2015. If his first work, REQUIEM, was about death, his second work, BABEL, was about life. It was an attempt to bring the matter of the absoluteness called death into present life, and to re-illuminate it with the question ‘how.’ Yisak Choi says perceiving death is the hope of life. He is ultimately questioning what values of life we should pursue at the border between life and death.

Such works are certainly related closely to what he confronts as a practicing doctor. During his internship he met terminally ill patients on a daily basis, and in the process became interested in the theme of his work REQUIEM. Witnessing the instability, despair and fear of patients facing death, the artist also recalled his encounter with the fear of death during childhood, when his lungs were filled with water: an utterly terrifying experience. From the moment we are born, none of us is free from death. Hence, the artist suggests that we should not deny or forget the finitude of humanity, but ‘memento mori,’ that is, remember death. His realization that true freedom and peace of mind begins with accepting death, came from his work in a hospice ward.

Memento Mori, originating from the artist’s personal experience, was first taken in color photography, and was later transferred to black and white in the correction process. In general, when a photographer wants to achieve a more abundant gradation of black and white tones, he will go through the process of converting the original color image into black and white due to technical advantages in the correction process. The main style of expression flowing through Memento Mori is ‘de-familiarization.’ As in the de-familiarization used by the Russian formalists, new transitions of consciousness are created by de-familiarizing the familiar, automatic, conventional perceptions.

A lifeless-looking ‘Fish’ that could be either dead or alive—it's hard to tell which—the white pupils of ‘Two Eyes’ on a plaster boy gazing unfocused into empty space, and the image of a ‘Vine’ tangled in an intricate web of branches that is impossible to undo, approach us in a heavy atmosphere. These are common objects of the city, but nevertheless feel mysterious and unfamiliar. As instantaneous thoughts originating from unconscious experiences settled at the bottom of the artist’s consciousness, they are secretive, solemn, and sometimes even sacred and marvelous. There is perhaps an endlessly expanding sense of frustration, or an expression of intense hope or will, beyond fear. Thus, the bird flapping its wings toward the vast sky as it soars beyond the enclosed prison-like walls in the photograph REQUIEM #20, seems to suggest that it has finally escaped from the pressure of death.

Now in the artist’s work, death is no longer a subject of despair or fear, but a light in the darkness and a hope amidst despair. To clear away the shadows of despair cast upon death, and to dream a dream as the original form of hope for life, are now the responsibilities of the viewers looking at the works.