As the Sharp Narrative Fades, A Revealing Map Emerges (PART 2): 명료한 서술을 지우니 또다른 지도가 드러났다. (파트2)

The exhibition maps Korea and France through an exchange program between gallerychosun and Le Wonder, a French artist collective. This is the second of three exhibitions; the first, focusing on "Daily Life and Art" presented artists dissolving their own "lucid" worldviews. The current exhibition explores how artists collaboratively create a shared map with the theme: "Virtuality"

Let's first examine the relationship between a territory and a map. Territory is the domain of land controlled by the state, defined by its boundaries. A map depicts this zone of power visually.

Why do we create maps? Unlike photographs or paintings that depict reality, maps use a shared symbolic language to represent known locations, with gaps indicating unknown places. They seek to simplify the world into a place that can be seen immediately while evoking romantic imagination about the uncharted. 

The exhibition visualizes the process of ten artists from diverse backgrounds collaborating to form a single map, not with clear images but as a space for discovery within the microscopic cracks and gaps. In other words, the exhibition is an attempt to seek a shared ground for diverse, often separate individuals and envisions a new landscape beyond current realities. 

Le Wonder is a French artist collective established by and for artists who independently manage their own space within an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Paris. Artists work solo and collaboratively in an experimental environment. Expanding gradually, the group now operates as an institution with a professional administrator. 

We ought to wonder why gallerychosun seeks to collaborate with Le Wonder, which is not a typical alternative space or ordinary art collective. 

gallerychosun introduces contemporary Korean artists to the art market while exploring innovative, media rich approaches such as performance, video and installation. It experiments with gallery space identity. The collaboration with Le Wonderr aligns with its avant-garde ethos.

The gallery redefines its role from mere distributor to community creator, envisioning a sustainable  non-commercial art ecosystem. Artists travelling between Korea and France function both individually and collectively, transcending borders to foster new political and geopolitical perspectives beyond national boundaries. 

The current exhibition features Yohan Hàn, Jeong Jeong-ju and Choe Sooryeon from Korea, Axl Le from China/Norway, and Martha-Maria Le Bars, Salim Santa Lucia, Antonin Hako, Elias Gama, François Dufeil, and Pierre Gaignard from France.

These ten artists gather around the central theme of “virtuality”, viewing maps as images that delineate power zones and enable worlds never seen before. 

The term “virtual” originates from the medieval Latin virtus, meaning latent power — potential influence not yet realised. The artists in this exhibition explore constructed universals and norms within boundaries

The artists participating in the current exhibition observe the universality and normality conditioned in the name of production and efficiency within the safe bounaries that separate certain areas. 

Furthermore, they pay attention on ambiguous forces that genuinely influence the world. As these ten artists move between countires, they explore different power zones and uncover new possibilities in uncharted territories.