In July, as summer begins in earnest, Gallery Chosun presents the exhibition 《My Cheshire Cat and from Himalaya》. The show features three talented emerging artists in their 30s: Lee Jisook, Um Along, and Kim Yoonha. Art historian Lee Sangyoon curated the exhibition and wrote the accompanying text.
Through video and media installations, the three artists explore the spectacle of material society as seen through the lens of imagination and fantastical experience. The works start from the question of whether the values shaped by what we perceive and experience are real, not to provide answers, but to dwell in the neurosis of the fantastical itself.
Lewis Carroll’s 『Alice's Adventures in Wonderland』 introduces the smiling Cheshire Cat. The cat moves freely through space, appearing and disappearing at will, and speaks to Alice in a manner that resembles language exchange more than conversation. When Alice becomes dizzy from the cat’s shifting body and spatial transformations, the Cheshire Cat slowly vanishes, leaving only its signature grin behind. In awe, Alice exclaims:
“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”
If the body produces the smile, what does it mean for a smile to exist without a body? The Cheshire Cat’s grin is a phenomenon that occurs without a tangible form; It is simulacral. It has no permanence, no stable identity, yet it leaves a clear effect on an individual.
The works of Lee Jisook, Um Along and Kim Yoonha in 《My Cheshire Cat and from Himalaya》 connect to this idea of simulacral experience and its influence. Like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, these works describe something that exists but has no substance, something too vivid and persistent to deny, a strange “thing” that lingers around us. Yet the exhibition does not try to define where reality ends and fantasy begins. Part of Wonderland's charm is simply to enjoy it as it is.