CFA Milano | Young-jun Tak: Twelve, Twelve, Twelve

If I were asked to categorize Young-jun Tak as an artist (1989, Seoul), I wou.ld likely include him in that relatively small company of those who are instinctively interested in representing the highest spiritual aspirations of human beings and their multiple communities. As a matter of fact these greater topics have been inspiring a certain kind of artistic production since the dawn of time. But those artists who openly have dared to deal with them tend to share some common traits over time. The formula created by theorist of neo-classicism Johann Joachim Winckelmann is likely the best way to nail it: noble simplicity and quiet grandeur. Thanks to this effective string of words the German archaeologist, whose celebrative cenotaph still enriches the San Giusto Cathedral in Trieste along with the nearby cosy museum dedicated to him, has been able to epitomize a precise artistic mentality, more than a mere aesthetics. And it’s enough to visit Tak’s website (link here) to realize that he has been walking along these lines since the beginning of his cursus honorum, already including the Berlin Biennale (2020), the Biennale de Lyon (2022), New York’s High Line (2023), the Julia Stoschek Foundation (2023), the Atelier Hermes in Seoul (2023), and the St. Moritz Art Film Festival, which awarded him last year as did the SONGEUN Art Award, who gave him it’s Grand Prize, also in 2024. Therefore, instead of providing evidence that the reader could easily spot by exploring the articulated body of works that Tak was able to put together in the last decade or so, I found it more appropriate to propose to him some keywords in order to make the artistic mentality under question26 spontaneously emerge from the artist’s own approach to the issue. The following line came to me a few days after I dropped him these few keywords as a perfectly in tune forward to what I was expecting and then followed: “I try to extend my childhood perspective, beyond the safety of my mother’s knees, to the wider world around me.” Please note that the images accompanying the following artist’s words show paintings from the Stressful Painting series paired with real scale ceramic reproductions of the artist’s mother’s back knees (2017-2018, 2024). The sculptures are suspended at the actual height of her knees from the ground. Through a five degrees scale, the 12 paintings in the series visualize the artist’s monthly level of stress in using day-by-day social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, spanning from March, 2017 till March, 2018.

Sexuality

Young-jun Tak: When I was between five and ten years old, I lived in a one-room house attached to a factory complex where my dad worked. At one point, he and my uncle co-owned a small deer farm, which quickly expanded to include elks, dogs, chickens, and crops such as red chilies, cucumbers, and eggplants. There was certainly plenty of mating going on, but witnessing it was taboo. Sometimes, I would hear the animals letting out strange moans and groans, and my anxious questions about these peculiar sounds were always met with my parents’ hushed reassurances that they were simply experiencing a “temporary illness.”

When I was eight, one afternoon after school, my gaze became fixed on a bizarre sight—my dog and our neighbor’s dog were somehow stuck together, back to back, not even looking at each other. They seemed just as confused as I was, unsure of how to separate from whatever was keeping them connected. Whenever they slightly shifted, whining in discomfort, I caught a glimpse of something wet, shiny, and pink—like a sausage—wedged right at their buttholes. Mesmerized by this extraordinary moment, I struggled to determine which dog was responsible for this mess or if one was hurting the other. It was impossible to tell who had brought that damn sausage. Their position didn’t match the classic one-on-top-of-the-other posture that a mature male narrator, with an amused chuckle, vaguely referred to as “mating” in South Korean wildlife documentaries. Because of this, I couldn’t connect the dots in my head—it didn’t even occur to me to wonder which one was male or female.

Then, I suddenly remembered the “illness.” With a mix of concern and curiosity, I hurried to fetch my mom, a smirk creeping onto my face as I framed this as a sausage scandal in my mind. But when I dragged her to the scene, she seemed more baffled than alarmed. Without much explanation, she simply nudged me back inside. Meanwhile, a few factory workers, having a smoke break nearby, were chuckling at the situation. That’s when I intuitively realized—neither this, nor all those strange groans I had heard from the animals before, had anything to do with an “illness.” I decided not to peek at the dogs through the window anymore. Whatever this was, I let them do it on their own.

Sexuality—it exists in countless forms, can be defined and categorized, but sometimes, it’s simply none of your business.

Spirituality

Young-jun Tak: My maternal family is Christian—a mix of Protestants and Catholics—while my paternal family is Buddhist. When my parents got married, they decided not to follow any religion in our new family.

Once, when I was a baby, my mom took me to a church in Seoul, which greatly displeased my dad. He believed that churches lured people in with gifts and then took things from them in return. When I was five, we moved to a satellite city of the Seoul Metropolitan Area for my dad’s new factory job. Our industrial surroundings didn’t offer much in the way of spirituality, apart from a small town church and a Buddhist rosary hanging from my dad’s car’s rear view mirror.

Some of my friends attended that church and often returned with a variety of snacks. In a way, I envied them as they held onto their giveaways outside the church on Sunday mornings while we drove past, the Buddhist rosary swaying side to side in the middle of the car. But I also understood that those armfuls of packages were meant to entice commitment. My mom once told me that my paternal grandmother had bought the rosary from a temple to protect our family from harm. It didn’t taste sugary on my tongue, but it felt sweet in a different way.

One winter weekend, we visited my maternal grandmother’s home and spent the afternoon with my great-grandmother. She was in her early nineties, and as we sat together on the heated living room floor, three generations of women and I shared a thick blanket over our legs and hands. At one point, my great-grandmother took my small hand in hers. Her wrinkled, veiny hands were warm and firm as she gently rubbed my palm to spread it open. My mom asked her to read my growth from it, and her fingertips tickled pleasantly as they traced the curved lines. I don’t remember much of what she said, but one thing remains clear: “You will have the wisdom of Zhuge Liang.” Zhuge Liang, a well-known statesman and strategist from Romance of the Three Kingdoms—a 14th-century Chinese historical novel widely popular in East Asia—was idolized for his intellect and foresight.

Both my grandmothers have passed away, but the rosary still swings in my dad’s car, and the lines on my palms have grown.

Spirituality—it is how I psychologically and emotionally connect myself to a being beyond time and space, allowing me to reflect on who I am.

Antiquity

Young-jun Tak: I have a younger sister, but I always wished for an older sister—hell no to an older brother—which was, of course, an impossible dream. I fulfilled this desire by spending a lot of time with my older cousins and my mom’s six sisters—definitely not with my less-caring, macho uncles.

This also shaped my tastes in things and food—the kind that would bring a smile to the faces of women in their 50s and 60s. I deeply respected my teachers and always wanted to leave them with a great impression of me—especially the (very hot) Taekwondo tutor brothers, whose solid hands would correct my postures. Even though my mom insisted my combat skills looked more like contemporary dance, I didn’t mind.

It was the same with material things. Our family didn’t own anything old or precious, but I managed to convince them to buy me a set of vintage-style, new bookshelves and a desk.

Antiquity—if you don’t have it, you can always invent it.

Authenticity

Young-jun Tak: Someone pushed me from behind on a staircase at my elementary school. I was taken away in an ambulance, with my mom sitting beside me in a hospital bed.

But, in my early twenties, this terrifying accident turned out to be a complete fabrication. When I brought it up to my family, my mom firmly insisted that it NEVER happened. I was deeply confused—how could something so vividly inscribed in my memory be false?

Eventually, I concluded that it must have been an incredibly realistic dream from my early teenage years.

Authenticity—always check yourself.

Rituality

Young-jun Tak: In my childhood, the elders around me passed down countless strange life lessons. Some were purely superstitious or pseudo-scientific: If you step on the door threshold, you lose your luck; if a boy spends too much time in the kitchen, his penis will “drop off”; an apple in the morning is gold, but in the evening, it’s poison; if you sleep with an electric fan blowing directly on you, you’ll die by morning—the infamous Korean fan death syndrome; when showering, be careful not to let soapy water get into your butthole—I still have no idea why.

I grew up overreacting to these bizarre yet highbrow teachings, and following them discreetly became part of my daily routine. Eventually, it turned into a full-blown panic: Walking down pedestrian streets, I desperately avoided stepping on the lines between paving blocks; I wept and dragged my mom out of the kitchen whenever we visited my paternal grandmother’s house—though she doesn’t have a penis; delicious apples turned into untouched still lifes every evening; all electric fans were firmly unplugged at night—no exceptions; and, well, I took great care of my precious butthole in the shower.

Thankfully, I no longer adhere to these old tales. But the comfort of repeating certain daily patterns has remained my personal ritual.

Rituality—you find a sublime, almost dreadful beauty in repeating something utterly unhelpful in life. You know it’s absurd, yet you still do it.

Symbology

Young-jun Tak: Nothing is truly hollow, and everything is symbolic.