Poster image of 《Artistic Life: Dear Mr. H》 © TINC

Regrettably, this exhibition, too, is a story about “space.”

More specifically, it is about alternative spaces. The term “alternative space” is generally understood as an exhibition space outside the conventional white cube and is considered to function as a channel for experimenting with and circulating diverse forms of art. More recently, however, it has also been interpreted as a space with heterotopic potential. In this exhibition, it is intended to become a kind of old map.

The experimental endeavors of alternative spaces that began to emerge in the 1990s at times sparked a whirlwind of artistic practice and became another name for solidarity. By 2023, they may also be remembered as part of a historicized, glorious past, and it is difficult to deny that some have become categories of signs with excessive representative authority—another name for power.

Yet the meaningful practices and promises that took place within them spread among countless artists and citizens over the course of more than twenty years. Thanks to this, we are now able to encounter artworks and practices of life situated within diverse contexts across “countless spaces.”

This exhibition seeks to understand the power of alternative spaces through the idea of “space.” Beginning from the narrow opening of “space,” it moves toward an almost desolately vast exit, asking questions about placeness and, ultimately, the meaning of art itself.


Eunhyung Kim, Jemullon-like Terrapolis, 2023, Painted mural © Eunhyung Kim

In 1915, the poet and critic Kim Eok wrote in his essay on art, “Artistic Life: Dear Mr. H,” that “the highest purpose of life lies in the place where life itself becomes artistic.” To all those who repaired and refashioned houses, offices, and even post offices and tearooms that had outlived their original purposes solely for the sake of artistic activity, we pose the question of what that “highest purpose of life” might mean.

What kinds of experiences has art given us, and what kinds of time has it opened up, and in what ways?

One philosopher once said that the first thought is a shiver. Perhaps the map of these “spaces” could only have been completed through the accumulation of those moments of shivering once felt in exhibition spaces. And as thoughts about these spaces continue to accumulate, concepts such as “placeness” and “the physical extent of a building” may suddenly emerge.

Despite the indiscretion of exposing these various thoughts surrounding space without any wrapping or embellishment, we extend our greetings to all those who continue to love these exhibitions in unfamiliar spaces, who make their way to them, and who persist in carrying these reflections forward. May all unfold as you wish.

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