Exhibition Poster © Gallery Chosun

The exhibition 《As the Sharp Narrative Fades, A Revealing Map Emerges (Part 2)》 attempts at creating a map between the two territories—Korea and France. It is the second exhibition in an exchange program between Gallery Chosun and Le Wonder, a nonprofit organization and a collective studio run by and for artists in France.

The exchange program consists of a total of three exhibitions; the first exhibition, held earlier this year, centered on the theme, “Daily Life and Art”, through which individual artists worked on eliminating their own, “lucid” worldviews. The second exhibition explores how individual artists create a shared map under the theme of “Virtuality.” We shall first examine at the relationship between the territory and map. Territory is the domain of land under the control of the state. While a territory refers to boundaries dividing the zone of power, a map represents the images of the zone of power.

Axl Le, Joseph’s Midnight Party, 2024, 2k video with sound, 21’ 45" © Gallery Chosun

Why do we create maps? Unlike landscape photographs or paintings that represent the reality, maps are symbolized in a language that has been agreed upon with each other; and maps point out unidentified locations placed between the marked locations. A map is an image imbued with a dominant desire to reduce the world to a place that can be seen immediately, and at the same time, it invokes romantic imagination about unknown places from the gaps in between.

The exhibition visualizes the process of ten artists, each rooted in unique terrains, collaborating to create a single map. Meanwhile, the map does not implement clearly demarcated images; it rather enables for these artists to discover any space formed by microscopic cracks between the already divided lands and explore new paths to find gaps. In other words, the exhibition is an attempt to identify a space where we, who are quite different from each other and often difficult to integrate when standing in our own domains, can stand together. Additionally, the exhibition is an adventure imagining a new landscape beyond the current world.

Le Wonder is an artist collective established by and for artists in France, where members autonomously manage their own space. The artist collective uses an abandoned factory building on the outskirts of Paris as its primary base to carry out various experiments. How the collective is organized and managed is somewhat unique: these artists work individually and as a collective. The loose community of about 60 artists has gradually expanded in size and is now functioning as a kind of institution with a systematic way, including a professional administrator as its representative.

Now we ought to wonder why Gallery Chosun intends to interact with Le Wonder that is neither a typical alternative space nor an ordinary art collective.

As a commercial gallery, Gallery Chosun has introduced contemporary Korean artists into the art market. In the meantime, Gallery Chosun has always been passionate about exploring new approaches to the marketability of art and the function of galleries by working with various media such as performance, video, and installation amidst large galleries. In other words, Gallery Chosun has collaborated with various artists by experimenting with the identity of the gallery space.

Gallery Chosun seeks to connect with Le Wonder, a platform that defies a piecemeal definition, resonating with Gallery Chosun’s experimental ethos through the collaborative program with Le Wonder. Additionally, the gallery re-examines the conventional role as a distributor of art works in the art market, envisioning an extended function as a community. It is creating a whole new map that has never existed before, imagining a sustainable realm that can thrive in the market on its own without commercialization.

Artists traveling between Korea and France eventually emerge as an individual artist as well as an art collective and promote political actions from a new geopolitical location beyond the territory of one country. As they move between Korea and France, these artists form a loosely bound yet collective presence, transcending national borders to develop political practices from a fresh geopolitical stance.

Martha Maria Le Bars, Peinture Paysages Mémoires, 2018-2023, Spray paint, porcelain, Variable dimension ©Gallery Chosun

The current exhibition features ten artists: Yohan Hàn, Jeong Jeong-ju and Choe Sooryeon from Korea, alongside Axl Le from (China/norway) and Martha-Maria Le Bars, Salim Santa Lucia, Antonin Hako, Elias Gama, François Dufeil, and Pierre Gaignard from France. These ten artists gathered around the central theme of “virtuality” as stated earlier.

Assuming that a map is said to be an image that demarcates a zone of power and at the same time a medium that potentially allowed us to imagine a world where no one has ever been to, nine of them focus on the 'virtuality' of a map. The word “virtual” originated from the medieval Latin virtualos. In medieval philosophy, virtus signified latent power—an influence that, while not actualized, holds potential and exerts an effect on reality.

The artists participating in the current exhibition examine universals and norms constructed within the safe boundaries setting up in the name of productivity and efficiency. Furthermore, they pay attention to forces that, though ambiguous, exert real influence in the world. As all these ten artists traverse between the two countries, they draw divergent zones of power and continue their imaginations into uncharted territories, unearthing the latent possibilities within these spaces.

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