Seoul, August 8 – 30, 2016, https://www.facebook.com/space.ba421
Ba421, a little space in between the electronic shops and warehouses of Sewoon Sangga Market, had an exhibition of photographs by Reu Ji Young류지영. All were photos of domestic appliance’s charger cables or power chords.
There were two prominent elements in the images displayed. First, it was the effect of mirroring and doubling: almost every photo either featured a mirror in it, and those that did not have been doubled in the format of a multiple print placed besides each other. The second element that stood out was a kind of mundaneness of the images on display. None of them was in itself extraordinary. They simply recorded some very common occurrences of our everyday lives. The way they have been shot (medium shot, high depth of field, in focus) also supported the simple point-and-shoot observation that has been taking place during the moment the image was made. The installation method was further stressing simplicity and everydayness: the photo prints have been fastened directly to the wall with double-sided tape, making their edges and corners slightly crumbled and uneven.
So overall it was clear that this was an exhibition about looking carefully at things around. Yet it provided little clues about a further thought direction to take. It did resonate with the electronics shops that surrounded the gallery, but at the same it felt slightly drowned in its surrounding. Where to go from here? One direction has been hinted by the additional photographic books by the artist on display: A commercial album of electric appliance photographs produced for an electronics company. Compared to that set of photographs, the Cable Drawings on display seemed like complements, as the AC adaptor cable is rarely the object of interest compared to the consumer electronic product itself. Here the cable, as an abstract shape that contains an expressive possibility in itself, has become the point of a careful observation.
Next door to Ba421 is another show window-size gallery, but I still could not figure out who is behind. Last year I managed to trace down a FB page, but that seems to be inactive since December 2015, so probably someone else took over the space. It looked very much like a design exhibition:
