Installation view of 《Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night》 © Chapter II

The group exhibition 《Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night》, featuring Soomin Song, Jungsu Woo, Jaeyeon Yoo, and Mokha Lee, takes its title from the renowned poem by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914–1953). With its repeated refrain—“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”—the poem resonates like a distant cry addressed to a world thrown into confusion by the pandemic, which seemed to have stolen an entire year from us.


Installation view of 《Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night》 © Chapter II

This exhibition was conceived as a response to the question: What meaning does art hold in a daily reality where fundamental rights such as free movement and assembly are restricted, and survival becomes the central concern? Measured by common standards, the intrinsic value of art cannot be quantified, nor does it offer immediate prosperity, material happiness, or direct solutions to scattered social problems. In a contemporary society saturated with AI and industrial technologies of extreme precision, art exists as a “totality of emotions”—an accumulation of human imperfection, layered thoughts, habits, and choices—thus resisting concise, definitive answers.
 
Nevertheless, art stimulates our vision and emotions, urging us to think and feel, and to reflect on both the work itself and the intentions concealed within it. Though once regarded as a uniquely human intellectual function, this act has been eroded under the pressures of efficiency, automation, standardization, and the overflow of media and social networks. Art rekindles this function. Its essential value lies in awakening and encouraging the human instinct to establish individuality and pursue spiritual elevation through observation, contemplation, and accumulated experience. In times of confusion, art calls us back to being human.


Installation view of 《Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night》 © Chapter II

The four artists—each shaped by different environments and pursuing distinct styles as professional practitioners—interconnect within this exhibition, forming a unified yet rhizomatic message. Their works contain clues such as “creative citation of historical iconography,” “the strange coexistence of tranquility and systemic failure,” “persistent inquiry into otherness,” and “a fairy tale about the gap between fantasy and reality.” Occupying the exhibition space, these works visually evoke a lingering end-of-the-century atmosphere.
 
Bearing the label of 2020 as an “age of impossibility,” the works function as markers of transformation nurtured by the participating artists. They appear to silently address us—those who have endured and ultimately accepted a year overshadowed by fear—not to hastily bid farewell to 2020 in anticipation of an uncertain future, but to rage against the fading year, to remember what was meaningful, and to reflect.

References