Poster image of 《PHATO-》 © Seoul Art Space Mullae

The title of PARK Seong Jun’s exhibition, 《PHATO-》, derives from the root of “pathos,” a term referring to subjective and emotional elements, as well as intense feeling or passion. In this exhibition, viewers encounter objects, light, sound, and interactive devices as elements that evoke human emotions and mental imagery.

Extending from the artist’s 'Conflict Grid' (2022–) series, the exhibition incorporates additional synesthetic elements involving both auditory and visual perception. Above all, it connects the spatial and functional characteristics of the black box theater used as the exhibition venue with key elements of the exhibition, emphasizing its sense of “site-specific immediacy.”

The exhibition begins while visitors are still waiting outside the exhibition space (the theater), when they are handed a headset. Visitors waiting outside the black box hear words and sounds generated by those who entered before them.

Although the auditory information conveyed through words and familiar sounds from everyday life evokes particular scenes and narratives, the fragmented and segmented nature of this information continually prompts viewers to recombine or reconstruct images within their imagination.


Installation view of 《PHATO-》 © Seoul Art Space Mullae

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors step onto a platform that functions simultaneously as a stage, a pedestal for objects, and a backdrop for the narrative, where they encounter objects arranged according to a regular 4 × 4 grid on the floor of the black box. As they walk between the objects, sensor-responsive sounds are activated, and viewers follow their own paths while observing the familiar, everyday objects placed on the floor. 

The sounds generated algorithmically along each route are connected to the concept of “repetition” producing “difference.” Here, difference does not simply signify dissimilarity; rather, it becomes a creative process through which the world and existence are experienced not as fixed structures, but as dynamic forces in continual interaction (Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 2004).

Along each path, pre-programmed random sounds and fragments of dialogue begin to emerge, seemingly prompting viewers to infer their relationship to each object. As visitors move through the stage or exhibition space almost like performers, indistinct shadows follow their movements, while projected images unfold across them as though the space itself were a monitor screen.

Whispers and background music heard from somewhere on the stage become the mise-en-scène and setting for a story, a scene, or a moment within a drama, prompting viewers to recall memories and emotions evoked by their own presence and movements.

In this way, viewers directly participate in the “spatial montage” created by the artist (Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, 2014), imagining their own narratives, scenes, and emotions as memories and events belonging to the self, the individual, and the community intersect.

Through this process, each viewer constructs a narrative of their own. At the same time, the stories articulated in response to their movements are passed on to the next visitor, just as those of previous visitors had been passed on to them, continuing as a form of creative act conceived not as a monologue but with a listener in mind.


Installation view of 《PHATO-》 © Seoul Art Space Mullae

After leaving the black box, visitors are guided to the mezzanine one floor above. Walking along a narrow balcony that offers views in all directions, they look down upon the stage through which they had been moving only moments earlier. From there, they observe another visitor inside the black box, taking on the role of an anonymous third party and observer.

As this process demonstrates, the exhibition unfolds in three stages according to spatial movement: “listening,” “walking,” and “peeking.” At each stage, visitors assume the roles of listener, participant, and observer. The roles of participant and audience intersect, and the situation shifts between exhibition and performance.

Throughout this sequential process, visitors who enter in an arbitrary order become actors and audiences, artworks and observers for one another. In this way, each becomes part of the stories created collectively. At the same time, the black box exhibition space repeatedly appears in transformed forms—as pedestal, stage, performance venue, and exhibition space—and is simultaneously recreated through each stage.

The context of the exhibition thus remains unfixed, acquiring a dynamic force through interaction. At another level, the exhibition resembles a kind of “poetic structure,” a single narrative composed through diverse forms of poetic language such as movement, speech, text, and shadow.

The “poetic license” of ungrammatical expressions that depart from established structures and orders resembles an act of disruption intended to cast doubt upon and question the underlying essence beyond reality.

Through this approach, the artist seeks to confront the “pathos” embedded in everyday life. The exhibition title, “Phato-,” suggests a potential for infinite expansion, much like the various stimuli, information, atmospheres, and environmental elements presented by the artist. Through “sound” and “objects,” expressed as coincidence, inevitability, or presence, the artist unsettles both the ruptures and the calm of everyday life, drawing us into the site of “Phato.”

In this way, the artist focuses on the realities of human desire and anxiety and on the essence of experience, continuing to question fixed entities or essences on the premise that the objects and realities we perceive are constantly transformed according to the environments and information given to us.

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