Nothing Here Was Ours: Pyo Minhong
Exhibition Critique (Extraction)
If an image is only a surface, is it our job to reveal what lies behind it? In his solo exhibition 《Nothing Here Was Ours》, Pyo Minhong brings together three elements: a book of poems, a film, and an installation that lets viewers engage with both. Visitors enter a space designed like a single hotel room, watch the film and read poems in English and Korean.
These three elements interact in subtle ways: the poems appear as subtitles in the film, the film echoes the gallery space, and the installation itself is inscribed with text. Visitors who have seen Pyo’s earlier solo exhibition (Whistle, 2018) may recognise his approach to arranging text and space.
The film presents quiet, detailed images of a space resembling the gallery, inviting viewers to follow traces of presence and turn inward rather than be caught up in spectacle.
Figures referred to as “he” and “we” remain elusive, and gaps appear throughout the work – between the pages, the film, and the installation, and in the spaces surrounding language itself. These gaps do not simply separate opposites; they create room for reflection, imagination, and personal interpretation.
What once seemed singular, unique or whole, becomes folded into other elements, forming corners within corners where meaning and flow are thrown, or have been thrown. How can we grasp these overlapping, intertwined corners when the book opens, images unfold, and the space spreads before us? Did we truly know? Or perhaps, knowing only at the surface, we could not. Beneath it all, the depth had been quietly supporting the thickened surface (Konno Yuki)
Translated by Gallery Chosun