A Dream During the Nap : Kwan Woo Park
From September 14 to 20, 2022, Gallery Chosun presents 《The Dream During the Nap》, a solo exhibition by Kwan Woo Park. The exhibition, made up of only conditions that trigger “experience”, draws out alertness, boredom, waiting, intense tension, and the climax of physical contact.
Only one visitor may enter at a time. Each person is asked to enter barefoot and blindfolded, then given a short message: “Go down and stay in the space. After some time has passed, when the next visitor enters and finds you, remove your blindfold and come back up”. Following this, the visitor carefully walks barefoot down a narrow, steep staircase while blindfolded and enters the exhibition space.
Inside, the lights are off. Apart from faint natural light leaking in through a small entrance, the space is filled with darkness and fog. Not knowing how long they must wait, the visitor either stands alone or encounters another visitor already inside through touch. After waiting again, they meet yet another incoming visitor, then make their way back up the long, narrow stairs to exit.
This project continues from the earlier work 《A Dance with a Wolf》. It is designed to test a new form of art in which an “event” functions as a structure that generates situations. While the same structure is repeated, each instance becomes deeply personal and unique through a special sequence of unfolding situations. The work exists only in the viewer's memory and can be recalled solely through recollection and testimony. To reveal the core nature of the experience, all secondary gimmicks are stripped away, reducing the form to an extreme simplicity.
As a result, the work is not something to see, hear, smell, or touch in the same way each time. Every moment is singular, cannot be reduced to a single account, and continues to repeat while producing difference; like a living organism.