Exhibition Information

(Source = Perigee Gallery)

			The past of the present becomes the future
Seung Oh Shin (Director of Perigee Gallery)

A cup of warm coffee is passed to me before stepping into the exhibit room. The aroma unique to coffee delights my nose. As the cup is transparent, the coffee and cream are visible, and it warms my hand. The cream, aroma, and warmth of the coffee that will soon disappear reveal their biggest presence in this moment. As if coffee is imposed with the role of reminding my sensory organs of feeling different things, it is quite faithful to this situation. I step into the venue, thinking about whether to take a sip of coffee or enter with it. The view unfolding before my eyes is a huge desk on which lumps of ice in different forms are placed. Although I didn’t touch it with my hands, it seems strange the way its visual coldness contrasts with the warmth of the coffee cup I hold in my hands. I think, “What’s more real?” My eyes follow the surface and outline of a lump of ice, immediately departing from the sensation of its coldness. I have a desire to touch its shiny and twisted form shaped when this ice naturally repeats being melted and frozen. As I guess that a cooling device is apparently under the desk, invisible though, I begin hearing some machine sound intermittently. With certainty, I take a sip of coffee, satisfied with the fact that I discovered the artist’s purpose. My tongue and throat are stimulated by the bitter taste of the coffee that is still warm. “Was coffee flavor always the same for everyone?” I doubt for a moment how we could share this. Looking closely enables me to find marks made by coffee spilled on the desk. Looking around at my surroundings, I find coffee cups just like mine carelessly placed here and there. When I am conscious of someone who was here before me, I wonder how they felt about this work.
(...)

(Source = Perigee Gallery)