Closed Containers
시간들의 서랍
Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul
June 21, 2022 - January 15, 2023
In Closed Containers, Yoo ponders upon objects in museums. Leeum’s galleries for traditional Korean art display many types of containers such as bottles, ewers, cases, dishes, and water droppers. These objects are empty but “closed” containers for they are no longer functional, with their original purposes only indicated by the labels. Yoo has taken this contradictory nature of the museum objects as the motif of the works in the exhibition.
A Pile of Grid and Piles of Grid are cupboards that cannot be opened; Pigeonhole a drawer that cannot store things; and Door a door that is forever closed. These non-functional objects allude to the constant tension between the museum objects and visitors who are prohibited from interacting with the objects. The empty, closed containers, on the other hand, are open to visitors’ boundless imagination of what could be stored in them. A Compartment of Time and Compartments of Currents are works that divide the infinite flow of time and water into one piece of painting, and many pieces of wallpaper, respectively. The two works symbolize the centuries of time that are deposited and the endless possibilities of what will be added in the closed containers. The exhibition culminates with the message conveyed by the letters that replace numbers on the faces of five clocks: container unfolds what you desire.
_Heyeon Kim (curator of the Leeum Museum of Art)