Artist: Min Yoon
Exhibition title: A scene for 210cm
Curated by: Moritz Scheper
Venue: Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen, Germany
Date: November 27, 2021 – February 13, 2022
Photography: All images copyright Philipp Kurzhals/Neuer Essener Kunstverein and the artist
The question of when work on a work of art is finished can be asked from two sides. First of all, of course, from the producer’s point of view, the question of the stage at which every further hand movement no longer makes a work better, but causes an opposite effect instead. On the other hand, viewers also struggle with this question. What is happening between me and a piece? A short flash in the pan (if at all), or am I getting something else out of it over time?
With the exhibition A Scene for 210cm, Min Yoon asks both questions at once in relation to his richly detailed and multifaceted sculpture 210cm (2021), a nameless figure, perhaps a character or mascot. After a intense production for an art fair, Yoon turned the view of his own product into the viewer’s perspective and designs a kind of behind-the-scene to his sculpture from this altered vantage point. Within this fictional setup, he hints at formal and textual strands of research, sketching narrative and graphic chunks that might give flesh to the figure. In the process, a juxtaposition of designs is preserved, regardless of whether or not they have found their way into the conception of the sculpture. Thus, the actually monolithic figure 210cm is reopened by this cloud of possible readings and contexts and developed into a projection surface. Central to this is the sketching moment, in which – not only, but also figuratively – the first lines on the white are hinted at, which are eventually solidified or erased. It is as if one were coming to a city as stranger, which always offers the possibility of reassembling one’s own identity.
Min Yoon (b. 1986) lives and works in Vienna, where he also studied. He has exhibited at Galerie der Stadt Schwaz; Lars Friedrich Gallery, Berlin; Gallery Meyer Kainer, Vienna; Freudenberger, Vienna; and Francesca Pia, Zurich. A Scene for 210cm is his first solo exhibition in Germany.
