The conversation between two people begins as a book is opened. “Is this your grandfather?” A hand turning the pages stops and points to a photograph. “Yes.” The questions continue. “Where was it taken? When was it taken?” Sangha Khym’s video work gather(2024) begins this way. Questions about a subject, place, and time recorded in or through a photograph emerge only when the image appears as a clear figure. Otherwise, most questions inevitably remain abstract—What is this? What was photographed? As I watched a scene that begins with such concrete questions, a memory surfaced: a summer day when I took a Han River cruise.

Once aboard, it seemed that people were not particularly interested in the scenery. Since the boat did not head out to sea, the ride was short, and there was little that could truly be called a spectacle—perhaps this was only natural. I looked at the scenery while exchanging conversation with Sangha Khym, who had invited me. “That’s the National Assembly building, right?” “Is this Yanghwa Bridge? Oh, it’s Mapo Bridge.” “That must be Bamseom.” Bamseom—at the time, I did not yet know that this island would later become the central subject of Khym’s solo exhibition. The experience of talking about visible objects, and my memory of that experience, recalled the opening of gather(2024).

Khym’s memory of Bamseom is as follows: “When I was young, there was no island in the river, and then one day it appeared. There was no island. Then it appeared small, and suddenly it was just there. Is that even possible?”¹ Seeing Bamseom from the boat, I felt the same strangeness she described. Had I been the one asking, I might have said, “What is that?” And if someone had asked me, “Is that an island?” I might have answered ambiguously, “Well, maybe it’s an island.”

The island carried such an uncanny presence that it was difficult to pose concrete questions. On reflection, asking when an island came into being or where it is located seems odd—an island does not usually appear and disappear, nor does it move. Yet confronted with this strange presence before my eyes, I could understand why the artist wondered when, where, and even how Bamseom appeared. It was unmistakably there, and yet unclear.

Compared to the album photograph shown in the opening scene and the clearly visible figure within it, the island is far less definite. Still, just as the artist begins a story with a single photograph, might even the most precise record be subject to the same questions—at least when it is tied to memory?

Our gaze toward Bamseom wavers between clarity and vagueness. When looking at this island—blasted in 1968 and yet still remaining—whether glimpsed in passing from a boat, lived on by former residents, seen only in photographs, or encountered in person, the questions must be posed together, collectively. On the day Khym and I took the cruise, people were looking at the 63 Building and the National Assembly. These landmarks were far easier to recognize and far more visually legible than Bamseom. Bamseom appeared simply as a mass of forest. Something was clearly there, yet difficult to define.

It had rained heavily the day before, and there was a chance the cruise might be canceled. Thanks to the successful departure, we were able to see the island that remains. Had the water level risen enough to obscure it, I likely would not have given the island a second thought. In sedimented pasts—where record and memory are mixed like muddy water—what lies beneath is easily overlooked from the speed and position of a passing cruise ship. Whether record or memory, everything that remains here is both clear and ambiguous. Bamseom prompts questions about what this is—what kind of object it is—and what kind of background, what kind of memory, it holds.

As I continued through the exhibition, the title 《Blurry Dreams》 resonated in an oddly fitting way. Memory is often likened to dreams, but is there anything as vivid as a dream? If dreams are places where narratives are vividly shaped by concrete experiences and thoughts, then what is a “blurry” dream? Perhaps it is something that has been eroded or worn away from what once existed—and yet still remains. Bamseom, as seen through Khym’s gaze, and the stories surrounding it, seem like such a mass: a condensation of memory, record, and experience. It is there, and yet it compels us to ask what it is—indeed, it leaves us no choice but to ask.

This notion of a “mass” brought back my experience of opening the book Missing Link(2024), presented in the exhibition. On the first page is a photograph of an elderly man seen from behind, looking out a window through a camera. When the gaze of a person looking outward forms a visual field through a device, memory and record become inseparable from the experience of seeing itself. As the pages turn, the image enlarges, gradually concentrating on the head.

Then a mass appears. While this mass is likely a photograph of the “mud balls” Khym has worked with since 2022, to me it resembled a head. The experience of directing one’s gaze outward returns inward, molded into memory—a record that can both coalesce and disperse. The head, as something that is not clearly defined yet undeniably present, becomes a mass, resembling Bamseom.

If memory and record are sediment, whether they surface or not depends on the point of view—both visual and temporal—though in truth they move vertically, rising and sinking. In gather, there is a scene showing a bedsheet. Nothing appears on the sheet as people converse around a photograph, and when the sheet is lifted to reveal what lies beneath, there is still nothing. Has the island disappeared? Or has it not yet appeared? The sound of flowing water continues. When we ask the person before us about what appears in a photograph, the answer is grounded in memory. Bamseom’s identity emerges as a condensation of ambiguity, mixed between the testimonies of former residents, Khym’s memories, and the scenes recorded through her work.

The visual field formed in the exhibition space—divided by walls yet directing the gaze beyond—takes shape in my own memory, much like the first page of Missing Link. The reason the video scenes and photographic outcomes appear in abstract forms is precisely because this is how Bamseom appeared to Khym. More than that, it is an attempt to show that this is a definite mass containing memory, record, and experience.

Her gaze toward the island is directed toward the past. The images flowing from a photograph Khym took of a former resident holding a camera—river and memory—remain in the mind through the apparatus. Though outwardly unremarkable, both Bamseom and the head are sites that remember and record the past. Like an image that enters the video frame and remains still, like a camera obscura–like exhibition space divided by walls yet allowing light to enter, images come inside and linger—only to scatter again.

Even if it appears abstract, there is something here akin to a “blurry dream”—something worn down or refined. It is the residue of experienced pasts, emerging from a gaze that horizontally connects memory, record, and experience. It is not vivid, but it is unmistakably present.

References

• [비평] 가는 꿈이라는 분명한 덩어리
  [Critique] A Definite Mass Called a Blurry Dream