BAE Jiyin_All These Massless Things 

Date

Exhibition : 8 November ― 10 December 2024

Poem Recital : 5~6PM, 8 November 2024

Venue

Sohyunmun

Bartos Coffee Lab

Weehours

The Blue Bruise Lingers On

Film and photography theorist and philosopher of history Siegfried Kracauer once remarked that an old photograph of his grandmother evokes a sense of the uncanny. In the image, his grandmother—decades younger than he knew her—smiles brightly. Her face, eerily familiar yet strangely other, is frozen in a state of joy that bears little resemblance to the person she became. What, then, does this radiant smile point to? Kracauer, in his sharp reading of photography, writes that the "smile in the photograph is extracted from life, but it no longer refers to life."* A smile severed from its lived context, the expression captured in the image remains sealed within a time that is no longer accessible. It is embalmed—preserved outside the flow of life. And this, perhaps, is the fundamental nature of photography.

Bae Jiyin attempts to translate this layered temporality into painting. Her works begin with family photographs—images that capture childhood moments, whether her own or someone else’s. These fragmented recollections are superimposed, creating a dense visual field where multiple times converge. Much like the old photograph of Kracauer’s grandmother, these aged family photos carry a certain quiet unease. Their uncanny quality seems to emerge from the dissonance between the person depicted—forever young, sealed in the past—and the self that exists in the present. It is within this temporal rupture that the emotion of unfamiliar dread takes root. Whereas the clarity of a photograph is dictated by the angle and position of the camera lens, Bae’s paintings rely entirely on deliberate painterly choices—blurring or sharpening forms at will. Faces in her paintings often appear blurred, their outlines soft and unclear. With cool, bluish tones layered throughout, Bae’s works evoke a strange mix of emotions—an unexplainable sense of longing, and a subtle but persistent feeling of unease.

The artist looks into old photographs—images of her childhood that even she now finds unfamiliar, of her parents in their youth looking quite different from today, and of people whose faces she can barely remember. What she finds in them are fragments of memory. When time halts, memory fills the space it leaves behind. The endless game of tag between time and memory never truly ends, but photography allows us to capture a fleeting moment within it. Still, no one can predict who will have the final say—time, or memory. Bae joins this game through her paintings. She selects photographs and brings them onto the canvas. As soon as she layers multiple photos into one image, the frozen time inside them returns to her as a composite memory. The resulting image is a woven surface of overlapping memories—some sweet, some painful, some distant, some strangely indifferent. The scenes from old family photographs are not a refuge to return to, but rather a reminder that the past is no longer within reach. The self buried in the past—does it wish to return, or to forget? For Bae Jiyin, this longing for the past lingers like a blue bruise.

A bruise—one that you don’t remember when it appeared or what caused it—can linger on the body like a bluish trace for a surprisingly long time. Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt at all, almost to the point of being unnoticed. But at other times, even the slightest touch makes it ache sharply. Memory can be like that too: we don’t always know when it started or what brought it on, but it can either fade quietly or stay with us for a long time, haunting us. Bae Jiyin paints this kind of blue bruise. She captures memories whose origins are unclear—memories scattered like afterimages, spreading across the canvas in shades of blue. She describes this bluish mark as a visual expression of "the anxiety of not being a complete adult." 

The Blue Bruise Lingers On. (Text by LEE Seulbi, Independent Curator & Director of Mihakgwan)

*Siegfried Kracauer, "Photo", in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. Thomas Y. Levin, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. p.48. 

Artist’s Note by BAE Jiyin 

A World Without Contours

I live in a world where time has disappeared. The past seeps into the empty spaces, invading the present. The horizon of the now is constantly shaken. Memories approaching from afar pile up on the canvas, gradually losing their shape.

   Kaleidoscope

I picked up a kaleidoscope to escape the limits of time. I became intoxicated by the fleeting scenes of color and light. Holding the kaleidoscope became a frequent ritual—a way to survive. In doing so, I became stuck in an unknown time zone. Shimmering afterimages drift through my daily life. Like an explorer lifting a telescope, I lift the kaleidoscope and step forward. But at the end of the journey, nothing remains.

   Blue Bruise

The blue bruise refuses to heal. So many memories are transmuted into sorrow.

Tomorrow feels vague and distant. Yesterday embraces the collapse of today. I want to feel again the excitement of a past where a hopeful future once existed. Dusk settles over the river. The fading light is nothing short of dazzling. My vision blurs in blue. My body is covered in bruises.

   Faint Tomorrow

Humans cannot be satisfied with the present because they imagine the future. We are incomplete beings. There is a gap between the shards of memory stained by failure and disillusionment and the uncertain direction of what lies ahead. We coexist with anxiety in this in-between space. The future can no longer be predicted by the patterns of the past. It becomes fainter each day.

Open hours

Sohyunmun, 12:00~19:00, closed on Wed.

Bartos Coffee Lab 08:30~19:00, closed on Sun.

Weehours 11:30~17:00, closed on Mon.

Poem Recital

Gwon Minkyung

Preface

LEE Seulbi

Hosted by

Sohyunmun

Organized by

BAE Jiyin, Maum Lab, White Forest Agency

Curated by

PAIK Philgyun

Photo recorded by

YANG Yian, JUNG Heesu, KIM Haechan

Exhibition managed by

KIM Haechan

Poster designed by

PPG

Supported by

Gyeonggi Province, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation