condenCITY_74 From roads to rivers

Image courtesy open source for public use: daum.net

As the rain continues to fall this day, July 28, 2011 the deluge of the last two days has left my home district of Seocho-gu underwater literally. What has officially been classified as a 100 year flooding event on the south side of the city is still unfolding in terms of an urban disaster. Homes washed out as mountainsides have eroded and motorists stranded on the roofs of their vehicles in 1.5m+ deep water, the rains caught many by surprise in the early morning hours on the 27th. With downpours falling in amounts as much as 2.3 inches (6 cm)/ hour it is no surprise that Seoul's drainage systems have been helpless against the torrential summer monsoon.

  

Cy Twombly [April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011] making histories

Coincidentally, it was last week I was posting a note regarding the memory of a great painter I once studied with.  In fact we had great discussions about the man I write of here now. About the same time on July 5th 2011, although I did not know it then, another American painter had just passed away. Cy Twombly wasn't just another painter. I was introduced to his work about 12 years ago as a student. At the time I was challenged by a suggested reference to his work and my budding interests. After some time in 2004, I wrote an article for Loudpaper Zine attempting to draw connections between the fragmented city of Seoul (in its palimpsestial formation) and Twombly's paintings of historical reflectance. 

Today, it is clearer to me as I have contemplated time and again, Twombly's work and the creative processes one ventures into as artist, architect, designer, or creator at will. It has been said that Cy Twombly would paint and draw in light subdued spaces to achieve the loose 'freehand' he was so recognized and known for. It was his "experience" as he once described, when it came to making art that appears form and idea consuming. We are in effect left with the process and depth of making and the significant exposure in that. 

Experience of making above all else, perhaps.  

With each passing, a history is made. Cy Twombly was a master, even during his life, of making histories.

Sussman remembered

'invisible'- e.reeder 2001

"I always use the analogy of a pool that has frozen over," in the words of Wendy Sussman "The finished painting is like that. So, in the pool at the lower depth might be a rock, and then there might be a little leaf that is frozen closer to the surface, and above that maybe a candy wrapper. It's all frozen in the pool, and then on the very top somebody comes and skates. The surface has this history, and that is time, the time of the painting."

More on Sussman here, in her words. 

condenCITY_73 heavy Seoul

My Seoul is heavy. Weighted with materials that connect to earth, the surfaces of the city, and bend precariously to the sky reaching. The architectural forms of Seoul are one with the ground, by the very nature of gravity that pulls at dense material compositions common in many structures throughout the city. There is ambiguity between ground and vertical surface. Where one begins and the other ends is at times unclear.