The Daily Routine, a Factory of Inevitability
The everyday is a continuation of inevitability. Put more accurately, it is a factory where inevitability is made, in the sense that it is impossible to run away from it. Let’s say you could get on a plane right now and fly away to Paris or New York. You would find there the same high-density daily life.
Sometimes the everyday is absurd and makes us snicker. But it can also be terrible. Occasionally it is hard to endure the anger that surges several times a day. In any event, the fact that it is impossible to ignore or avoid it is important.
We must remember that the everyday is a factory of inevitability. Every element that you face, either perceivable or non-perceivable, everything that composes the daily routine becomes the material of inevitability. This is true of war, our society composed of misers and homeless people, the large and small scars in the mind, and even the weather. The events you have actually experienced are especially important. This is a crucial maer, because the daily routine creates inevitability, and the “ego” is formed amidst the pushing and pulling, the wrestling with that inevitability.

The Daily Routine of Pop Art
Pop Art also discussed the daily routine, but the problem was that the everyday of Pop did not talk about “unhappiness.” Of course unhappiness is ugly. But daily life without unhappiness is not real. It is merely a daily routine reduced within the boundaries of department stores or supermarkets and cleverly edited. The daily routine of Pop is sweet and full of certainty. But due to this very fact it becomes the cousin of “hell,” which is the name of everything “fake and superficial.” “Hell is nothingness that tries to exist, and gives the illusion that it does exist! … To people fallen into unhappiness, life—life that is not much beer than death—feels the sweetest.” (Simone Weil)
For example, the daily routine of Pop is obsessed only with survival. And the time in which all that remains is the obsession to survive, is the point when “extreme unhappiness” begins. This extreme unhappiness can destroy the ego, which is the power to say “I.” This destruction is the worst thing that can happen to the ego. That is because it takes away the opportunity to destroy “me”—the source of obsession and desire (for the world)—on my own. When this happens, the last remaining energy to “keep a distance,” which is given as I destroy myself, becomes exhausted.

The Never Simple Daily Routine
Philosophy originates in the effort to escape from inevitability. Philosophy, however, can only call inevitability into question; it has no power to enable one to escape from it. If so, then what about art, which is a form of confession in itself? Weil hopelessly raised the upper limit that painting must reach. “A painting that can be something not terrible even if it is hanging in the cell of a prisoner serving a life sentence”—what form or what depth must it achieve for it to reach this level? Certainly there is still a long way to go. In contrast, it appears difficult for many things in this era to achieve even second- or third-class status.

In the exhibition Daily life not so simple, the everyday is not a space of certainty, but a space that shakes the basis of the everyday itself. Therefore, it is quite far from the categorized daily routines of Pop, which has been reduced to consumer activity and represented by Coca-Cola or Marilyn Monroe. The exhibition re-summons things that have been banished from the showcases of Macy’s or Printemps Department Store, and the daily routines that have not been won over by Apple’s minimalism and Google’s line of cultural totalitarianism. These include dreams, sounds of the wild calling, tears forming in large eyes, people wandering in a thick rain forest, and weak, relational and unstable things. Or perhaps because people’s ability to hear has already sufficiently deteriorated, buerflies, deer, rabbits, horses, birds and unidentified plants serve as messengers of recovery instead.
I hope this special exhibition will be an oasis where people can rest their tired bodies. As the COVID pandemic continues, if it were not for the following participants, the Daily life not so simple exhibition could never have been realized. I express my deep gratitude to Director Kang Hyo Yeun of the Daegu Art Factory, Professor Françoise Docquiert, who took charge of curating the French artists’ section, the five French artists, and the nine Korean artists.

Sim Sang Yong
Director, Seoul National University Museum of Art

Media: Around 150 works including paintings and sculpture
Artists: Kim Cham Sae, No Sooncheon, Moon ChaeWon, Park Siwol, Seo Jeman, Lee Eun Yeoung, Im Chunhee, Jung Sungyoon, Han Sang A, Romain Bernini, Edi Dubien, Alice Gauthier, Suzanne Husky, Rob Miles