Exhibition Information

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

			
Berlin Blue (2025) started with the concern about whether we could be friends, allies, or family, at least temporarily, without destroying each other in a world imbued with discrepancy and hate.    

As no society or system can fully represent every component, the sense of non-belonging could indeed configure a broader terrain where different beings can meet. Berlin Blue simulates a time and space where each of us as a “minority” can intersect, overcoming a reality where nobody can, in fact, be absorbed into a “majority.” ∅-places, ∅-objects, and ∅-beings sovereignly occupy the hollow space for projected definitions that are by far detached from any authentic origin. These declare their own body and dimensions, standing on a ground for a possible sense of belonging as if it had already arrived.

Isu, the protagonist of the video, swipes through the profiles of potential lovers as usual on a dating app and departs for a spiral time travel to meet them. In the early 18th century Prussia, at the advent of modern powers, World Wars and colonialism, the first chemical pigment Berlin blue was invented. It quickly replaced dark blue pigments that had traditionally been traded as luxury goods. By the early 19th century, the pigment successfully reached Japan, and was introduced in early ukiyo-e. Until its replacement by photography, ukiyo-e declined into a medium for Japanese war propaganda. In the early-20th-century Joseon, the last dynasty in Korean history, went through a forced reformation of traditional patriarchal values under the repressive rule of colonial Japan, producing many ∅-beings unresolved until today. Skipping over hundred years of time each, Isu encounters three lovers but returns after each failed date, to a “future” that seems familiar yet is not the same anymore.    

The images in the video, either from historical archives or resulting from consumer-level AI-prompting, are saturated with the banality of the human sense that has been accumulating throughout our time. Like how we turn more cautious when we talk about disruption and pain, the tactile sound sphere palpitates gently. In the installation, things produced as props for the video occupy the exhibition space and physically mark three stations of Isu’s spiral time travel. All used materials are recycled or can be further recycled after the exhibition.

Installed on the 2nd floor, Margins (2025) deconstructs into portable units and reassembles jangot, which was worn by Isu (it/its), the protagonist of Berlin Blue. The main video is simultaneously on view in the exhibition at ARTSPACE BOAN 2. Isu appears covering its face, but after the encounters with three lovers, it gets rid of the objects of imposed projections to proceed more lightweight. The Bridge Shelves is a space mostly dedicated to the promotion of publications distributed by Boanbooks. Accompanying the exhibition publication of Berlin Blue, each different and flexible segment in Margins freely combine and occupy the geometric sections of the display shelves. As such, they bring marginalized beings to the foreground to be finally read as they are, breaking the state of being that was reduced to signs and tokens. 

* Berlin Blue: Publication is released as volume 4 of the Bupyo series, an artists’ book series by Boanbooks, and accompanies Sylbee Kim’s solo exhibition held at ARTSPACE BOAN 2, 2025. Writers Yeonsook “Rita” Lee and Steph Holl-Trieu, and designer Heesun Seo collaborated from Seoul, Berlin, and Hong Kong. Witnessing Kim’s entire process of conceiving and developing Berlin Blue, they arrive at the exhibition together as a book, while two of them won’t be able to visit it physically. In this sense, Berlin Blue: Publication brings to the viewer on site the condition and formation of the project as an element at hand. Limited physical copies of the publication are available at Boanbooks for 7000 KRW.