JURYEON

Juryeon, a traditional Korean architectural element, is a vertical panel attached to the building post or wall, upon which wise missives are written. They could be found in traditional Korean houses where people admired the courtyard, or in traditional gazebos, which offered views of the natural scenery, or in the Buddhist temples.     

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Juryeon, in this exhibition, are installed on both sides of the screening room entrance, heading toward Water Mark. The two pillars, with inscribed words on their surfaces, imitate the shapes of the pillars at the entrance of the MMCA Seoul. The original pillars were established when the building was used as the annex hospital of Kyungsung Medical School under the Japanese colonial rule. Strangely enough, one is cylindrical and the other is cubical. The words engraved on the Juryeon are quotations from classic literature. The phrase inscribed on the cubical pillar, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here,” is a quotation from William Shakespeare’s Tempest—the words of a person who was screaming while escaping a boat that caught on fire and plunged into the sea. The words on the cylindrical pillar “Hell is empty, when seen through the eyes of wisdom,” a quotation from Cheonsugyeong, one of the Buddhist scriptures, is the same phrase as that on the Juryeon of Jingwan Temple. The two quotations concisely reflect the two overlapping views of the film titled Belated Bosal. The film can be viewed simultaneously as a joke, a depressing story, a delusion and a reflection of the real world. In the two phrases, we can conceive of the differences between Western and Eastern cultures.  (MMCA)