Installation view © Atelier Hermès

Yoon Young Park

For the Hermès Foundation Art Award exhibition, Yoon Young Park presents . The work originates from two key elements: a glass marble gifted by her seven-year-old niece and the meanings of "Hexahedron" and "Manifold." In an effort to unravel these questions, the artist began writing the following narrative while gazing at Mt. Baker and listening to Ravel’s :

"It began with a large diamond-shaped glass marble my seven-year-old niece gave me. Around that time, I listened to Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and 2 in G minor with my family, which evoked the mysterious depth of a black grand piano. It reminded me of Ravel’s and Hermann Hesse’s .

Bertrand’s poem invoked ‘Sirens,’ which in turn recalled Gyunhui from Gojegi’s painting of , based on Josik’s . All of this folded into a layered sensation, like thin silk. On the night after the concert, walking past the black grand piano in the basement, a mysterious harmony unfolded before my eyes amidst the still silence." (12.25.2008)

Based on this narrative, the work unfolds into three parts: a folding screen that symbolizes columnar joints of a volcano, a wall piece reinterpreting John Baldessari’s 〈Buildings = Guns = People: Desire, Knowledge and Hope (With Smog)〉, and a silk painting and pictogram work representing the exhibition’s title.


Installation view © Atelier Hermès

Jae Oon Rho

For the Hermès Foundation Art Award, Jae Oon Rho proposes : "This work is a single interface composed of eight distinct pieces. Through this interface, I aim to reconsider the fundamental perceptual conditions that shape our reality. By combining fragments extracted from Korean and global cinematic histories—including images, texts, set pieces, props, songs—with cyber space and scenes from specific realities, I attempt to reweave the worlds of image and reality, history and memory, desire and dream. The works that constitute this interface are only loosely connected thematically or narratively. The title may help the viewer imagine a vague state rather than a specific context, embracing the spatial nature of this interface."

Viewed simply, the interface appears to bring together and clash several narrative threads. One is Korean history as seen through its media representations, particularly the recurring cinematic dreams in post-Korean War films (e.g., , ) that overlap with low-resolution images emerging from cyberspace ("Memory is low resolution"). These evoke a sense of repeated history, unfulfilled dreams, and endlessly deferred songs of longing. Another thread presents reflections on the inherent qualities of cinema and vision.



Hwayeon Nahm

This exhibition centers on the and comprises three short works. The first, , is a video documentation of performances conducted in Utrecht and Seoul. Nam created masks for characters in her scenario, distributing identical masks to participants in both cities.

These masked individuals interpreted their roles through improvised movements, generating diverse expressions. In Utrecht, the artist exhibited the text of and conducted a one-day street performance with participants, which was filmed and is shown on a TV monitor on the terrace. A second performance took place in Seoul with new participants, documented and shown via projection in a small room adjacent to the terrace.

The second work, , can be viewed on a TV monitor installed beside the spiral staircase in Atelier Hermès. It features a dancer performing amidst traffic symbols arranged on a rooftop. The third work is installed opposite the video and consists of a silk-screened map and wall text. The map indicates the performance locations in Utrecht and Seoul, while the wall text lists operation names from the scenario.

References