The union of the two artists is not a simple addition in which one plus one becomes two. Until the moment their works are hung together in one space, innumerable possibilities exist between them. Many of those possibilities pass by ordinarily without great change; some become events that offer a bit of amusement; others yield completely unexpected results.
 
Among them, certain cases bring about tremendous outcomes, like the butterfly effect in which the small flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil causes a tornado in Texas. These unpredictable possibilities generate a multiverse in which countless result values coexist. And here are two artists who travel that multiverse on their wings. Kiwon Park and Inhyun Lee leap into the chaos of disorder where outcomes cannot be predicted and create their own multiverses.

To understand the artists’ multiverses, it is necessary to retrace their first wingbeats—their beginnings. Park first saw Lee’s works in person when Lee returned from Japan and held successive solo exhibitions with the series Strata of Painting. Witnessing works that posed philosophical questions to the art-historical structures defining painting, Park says he felt respect for the artist named Inhyun Lee.

Lee, for his part, says he encountered photographs of Park’s exhibition online when Park was selected as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Artist of the Year in 2010. He was captivated by the outstanding work that instantly altered the museum’s aura and, from that time, kept the artist Kiwon Park in his heart. In this way, unbeknownst to themselves, they were stirring a small breeze in each other’s direction through their works alone.

When they met in a four-person exhibition at Gallery SoSo in 2014, the two finally hung their works together in a single space. Of course, they had participated together in group shows before, but since installation zones were divided by artist, it would be a stretch to view those as the start of a collaboration.

Beginning with that 2014 group show, their relationship took on the form of a true two-person exhibition with 《When Kiwon Park Met Inhyun Lee》 at Tea Studio in 2021. Co-organized by Gallery SoSo, which had long followed both artists’ practices, and the art critic Byeonghak Ryu, the exhibition provided an ideal stage for the two artists to fully face one another. Characterized by an exceptional interpretation of space, their practices revealed their unembellished essence in the raw space, with nothing to add or subtract.

Park’s work—what he himself calls a dialogue with empty space—is marked by creating a grand flow through minimal intervention into space. The Tea Studio he fashioned was the same: a space of exposed concrete with its skeleton revealed, remodeled just enough to show the building’s history as it was. Responding to such a space, Lee hung two decalcomania works side by side directly facing the entrance to sharpen the atmosphere, and on the second floor he introduced weight with a deep blue work composed of five canvases combined.

By exhibiting works that used the cloths on which he had practiced paint densities, he even revealed the beginnings of the work process itself. Park, meanwhile, installed a painting not on the front wall but along a corner of the side wall and placed white cloth balls on the floor, completing the air of the exhibition space.

Two years after the exhibition at Tea Studio, where they took their first breath together in their unadulterated forms, the artists began stretching their collaborative wings again this year with a succession of shows unfolding across different spaces. Though each exhibition was proposed as a separate project, the schedule ultimately arranged three consecutive shows across April, May, and June, and the artists accepted it as is.

Such a punishing timetable—beginning the next exhibition before the previous one ended without any change in artist lineup—could easily have resulted in tautological exhibitions. Nevertheless, while maintaining their true selves, they presented three entirely different exhibitions that changed completely according to space.

In the first show of the year, 《On Time about Length, Width, and Thickness》 at Woonjoong Gallery, the artists’ works were placed facing each other in a space reminiscent of a salon. At this gallery, which actually hosts art-history academies, the two presented intense works, and Lee’s deep blue and Park’s vivid red—which became the motif of the exhibition poster—formed a strong contrast.

Lee also included Strata of Painting – Lagrange Point, a work with several challenging meanings such as the use of discarded cloth, combining works with different production years, and incorporating the frame into the work itself—first shown in his solo exhibition last year. Despite such radical recent works and the color contrasts inherent in each piece, the exhibition space was elegant and composed. By choosing a neat and tranquil arrangement in a space with vases of flowers and bookshelves, the two conveyed their rhythm elegantly and comfortably, like a mature conversation.

In the following exhibition at Gallery R, the two artists transformed the space with a completely different tempo and air. Curated by art critic Byeonghak Ryu, 《Jagangducheon》—a title borrowed from a neologism meaning “two self-proud geniuses”—emphasized the meeting of two formidable masters, Kiwon Park and Inhyun Lee. Like martial-arts masters who spar tens of thousands of times in their minds, they swiftly teleported the empty white space to a far-off galaxy with works each had prepared after only brief discussion.

By separating Lee’s two-panel work and installing it horizontally to stretch the view, they maximized the perspective of the corridor extending from the entrance. Following that path and turning one’s gaze ninety degrees, one suddenly encountered Lee’s new work, themed on parallel universes, and Park’s floor-covering installation of black cloth balls—composing a spectacle as if stepping into the midst of a galaxy. Passing through that galaxy into the cul-de-sac, viewers came face-to-face with Park’s fluorescent-tinged painting, prompting the imagination of yet another universe beyond.

Thus 《On Time about Length, Width, and Thickness》, which evokes an eighteenth-century French salon, and 《Jagangducheon》, which feels like a time warp into future space travel, each stage completely different times and spaces. Even so, a closer look reveals how quintessentially Park-like the exhibited works are—and just as quintessentially Lee-like. While maintaining the artistic philosophies they have built, the two artists responded flexibly to the situations before them, producing exhibitions that are so alike yet so different.

As they exerted small influences upon each other, the resulting differences returned vastly magnified. The tiny wingbeats that nestled in each other’s hearts more than a decade ago are gradually stirring into a storm. Perhaps the two already knew the possibilities of this multiverse born of the butterfly effect. As they prepared the two prior exhibitions, they fixed the title of their next show at The Soso as 《Amazing Multiverse》.

The Soso—Gallery SoSo’s Seoul venue where 《Amazing Multiverse》 unfolds—retains the gritty atmosphere of the tool-shop district along Cheonggyecheon in Euljiro. The exhibition space, opened wide by puncturing the cramped grid of an old building, admits in rushes the views of surrounding buildings and Bukhansan through large windows at both ends.

Thinking of this space, Park says he had envisioned a vinyl installation from early on. He curtained the urban landscape with translucent vinyl, connecting outside and inside with light and gentle movement alone. For the windows facing the back alleys packed with buildings, he used vinyl with a subtle bluish cast; for the window opened skyward toward Bukhansan in the distance, he used milky vinyl. The quiet, delicate distinction hinted at the scenery beyond the windows while naturally connecting to Lee’s deep blue works installed inside.

In the series of new works Lee completed under the subtitle of the exhibition title—“Amazing Multiverse”—two worlds that are the same yet different coexist. Saturating cloth with blue oil paint, he pressed two layers of cloth together to make transfer prints, then separated them, mounted each on a board, and placed them side by side. Though the two panels share the same origin, physical differences in how paint soaked into the overlapped cloths give rise to different forms.

At a glance, the piece appears to be two entirely different images placed in parallel, simultaneously presenting multiple outcomes derived from the same source. Included there, borrowing Lee’s words, are the rough, chance results that occur when peeling apart the overlapped cloths—so rough, in fact, that a tearing “jjeojeok” sound can be heard. Having built a keenly refined formal language through meticulously calculated chance, Lee says he found that fierce outcome astonishingly displeasing one day and, the next, perfectly satisfying. In producing two worlds that are the same yet different, he also delighted in the two unforeseen directions of feeling that arose in the process.

From the bluish dawn created by Park’s vinyl work Holy Wind, through the vast cosmic storm stirred up by Lee’s Strata of Painting – Amazing Multiverse, and back to the white light of another Holy Wind by Park, there lies below Glacier, Park’s installation composed of shimmering metals. Having traveled through the cosmos that ruled the night, one gradually returns to Earth. On the wall bathed in that milky light hangs Park’s painting imbued with the green of grass.

It is a shift from the cosmic tempest to the forest’s breeze, from the night’s force to the light’s brilliance. Just as Lee savored the two opposing feelings born from two different forms that emerged unpredictably out of one, Park too seemed to enjoy this transition, hanging a bright and buoyant painting. In his painting, lines crisscross joyfully in every direction amid a radiant green variation.

Park’s Holy Wind raises a light breeze in the space with a small wingbeat. That breeze soon becomes a storm, churning a rough, blue vortex in Lee’s Amazing Multiverse. As if delighted by this immense tempest, Park’s painting shines more brightly, letting innumerable lines intersect. Very small choices, very small affinities, and very small flows of air thus rush headlong into the chaos of disorder. With each wingbeat, a world is born. Those worlds overlap and agglomerate, stirring a great storm. The brave butterflies fly into that storm. Thus the multiverse comes into being. In this amazing multiverse where two butterflies flit about, one cannot take one’s eyes off the scene.


Heejeong Jeon (Gallery SoSo)

References

• 《환상의 멀티버스 (Amazing Multiverse)》