Installation view of 《Yesterday’s
Surprise》 ©The WilloWThe
WilloW presents a solo exhibition 《Yesterday’s Surprise》 by
artist duo RohwaJeong (Yunhee Roh and Hyunseok Jeong), on view through June 22.
This exhibition delicately weaves the tension between connection and
disconnection through signs and subversive play, posing a question to the
viewer about the relationship between “me” and another “me.”
We
live in a society increasingly absorbed in asserting and defining the self.
yet, as this notion of a consolidated “me” becomes more robust, our ability to
engage with the other, another “me,” grows ever more precarious. This
exhibition reflects upon such contemporary sensibilities, probing the
instability of relationships and the (im)possibility of connection. RohwaJeong
proposes that the relational (im)possibility can emerge through a subversion of
binary structures.
RohwaJeong
is an artist duo who has worked under a singular name for over fifteen years.
as two independent subjectivities forming a single artistic body, they have
drawn upon the tension, collision, and persuasion arising between multiple
agents as the driving force of their practice. In this exhibition, RohwaJeong
defers fixed meanings, punctures the system of signifier and signified, and
generates delays in meaning and layers of subversive play through signs,
images, and devices.
The
recurring motif of wires throughout the exhibition traverses roles—as medium,
support, or sculptural element—linking each work while evoking a relationality
and an ethics of sensation. Through the inversion of subject and object, it
prompts the viewer to reconsider how we might rebuild layered connections in a
time of individualized isolation.
《Yesterday’s Surprise》 calls for a
sensitivity to what glimmers. It asks for a subjectivity capable of
responsiveness, grounded in an ethics of sensing. by capturing moments of pure
surprise, the exhibition summons forgotten relationships and nameless
presences, leading the viewer to imagine
a landscape where momentary surprise relates to a different “me” that is
not “me.
