Poster image of 《Songs From the Memory - Ahn Kyuchul, Eun Chun》 © Kyobo Art Space

《Songs From the Memory》 is an exhibition about thinking of “something” that has disappeared and can no longer be seen.

It evokes an unreal moment in which, by closing one’s eyes and listening quietly, one seems to hear the song of someone who is no longer present. Imagining such narrative and intangible moments created by vanished beings, the exhibition follows an enduring question in art: what can art become for human beings?

In a novel published thirteen years ago, a seven-year-old boy who suddenly loses his father begins collecting small traces left behind in his father’s study—crumpled notes, keys, books his father once read—in an effort to find something his father might have left specifically for him. The boy becomes particularly fixated on an old key he finds in the study, trying it in every lock he encounters, only to face repeated disappointment. He also singles out a name written clearly in his father’s handwriting and, using a telephone directory, visits every person who shares that name. He asks each of them whether they knew his father, though—perhaps inevitably—none of them do.

From an adult’s perspective, the boy’s actions may appear futile, a repetition of efforts whose failure seems predictable from the outset. Yet in his attempt to remember his absent father as a living presence, the boy does everything he can. Though he never finds what he seeks and repeatedly experiences the feeling of emotional collapse, each attempt—to fit the key into a lock, to visit another unfamiliar address—keeps his father vividly in mind.


Installation view of 《Songs From the Memory - Ahn Kyuchul, Eun Chun》 © Kyobo Art Space

To think of “something” that no longer stays by one’s side requires narrative imagination. That presence greets us on the stage of a story we construct, hums a song, takes flight into the sky, or dances to a rhythm. In 《Songs From the Memory》, audiences encounter works by Ahn Kyuchul and Jeon Myung-eun at close range, and in some cases become co-creators by actively engaging with the works.

Through emotional transference with the artworks, visitors are invited to recall—without pain—“something” that has disappeared from sight, and to compose their own narratives of consolation.

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