[Preface] SSU 2024
SSU(WW), short for “Suyoil Suyoil” (“Wednesday Wednesday” in Korean), is Sohyunmun’s annual curatorial exhibition program. It highlights individuals and collectives whose practices explore Asian cultural identity and art-based creation.
On the timeline that links yesterday to tomorrow, Wednesday responds to a call to remember the past and welcome what’s to come. A greeting between Wednesdays, a momentary echo across time. In its layered meaning, ‘Wednesday Wednesday’ becomes a flexible relation—imagining yet another connection. It is both repetition and emphasis; each word describing or reflecting the other. At Sohyunmun, Wednesday is a day of rest. So ‘Susu’ invokes both the beginning and the ending of an exhibition.
In 2024, ‘SSU(WW)’ turns its focus to the lyrical grayscale works of Goseong, Kim Yeryoung, and Han Yeonhee—each engaging with the act of printing on paper-based substrates. Through this, the project gently traces how visual and textual languages uniquely reveal image. On sheets of plant-based fiber, gray matter seeps in—manifesting as ‘smoke’, ‘rain shower’, and ‘mushroom’. These visual languages open a pathway to imagining the potential of a post-Korean painting practice. This exhibition observes a moment where lingering time, briefly anchored then passing on, enters into a new artistic phase. At the same time, it draws attention to a form of shared cultural grounding: the three artists live and work in neighboring cities (Suwon/Ansan – Kim Yeryoung, Yongin – Goseong, Gwangju – Han Yeonhee), cultivating a quiet yet resonant solidarity. As culture is the very ‘grain of the era’, their expression—rooted here—leaves a new trace upon this land.
Poetry as print, printmaking as reproduction, and photography as reprinted image—each of these media creates a certain distance from the original. This distance often shapes how we see and value them. You gently watch smoke rising, light rain falling, and a mushroom suddenly appearing—then disappearing. In those short-lived moments, you find yourself meeting three artists who quietly reflect one another.
Goseong’s work has often moved between deep forests and the edges of the city, following a slow and sincere gaze. In this project, that gaze pauses—just before meeting something in the smoke-filled mountain. By delaying that moment, the artist layers different ways of seeing into a single space. Time, once frozen in a photograph, begins to move again. This brings us into a space of quiet possibilities—beyond what we can clearly know or name. A leaf resting on a curved back becomes a swaying branch on the ridge. The last spark of fire moves into shadow.
Kim Yeryoung transforms aspects of life into images shaped by perception and sensation. For Kim, printmaking is one of the most honest ways to express those impressions. Using a collagraph technique—where objects are placed between the plate and the paper—the artist captures the rhythm of surfaces, revealing subtle textures, dust, and the softest sounds. Kim’s exploration of the space where a sudden rain begins or ends becomes a quiet way of accepting fleeting moments, unnoticed things, and simple crossings. It is a gentle method of loving what passes through.
For Han Yeonhee, a poet, this exhibition is also a home for poems. Following their words, readers call out to an ‘unnie’(the older sister in Korean) and briefly step outside the usual frame of life. On the second noon of the show, Han writes new poems in direct response to other artists’ visual languages, and on the final Saturday, reads from their first poetry collection It Was a Snowstorm, And Then and the second, Rare Species: The Tear-Spirit Mushroom. These actions expand the conditions in which text becomes voice—honoring poetry at its core.
‘Suyoil’ (Wednesday) is not a day to be painted over with the weariness of yesterday, but a space reimagined with the brightness of tomorrow. The setting mushroom understands why ‘you’ drift away. The black rain understands why ‘I’ come closer. The white smoke understands why ‘we’ gather. The forest of yesterday waits to cleanse promises once owed to the world.
A father, too, longs to remain a boy. (Text by PAIK Philgyun)
Hosted by
Sohyunmun
Organized by
Maum Lab, White Forest Agency
Produced and curated by
PAIK Philgyun
Program managed by
KIM Haechan
Photo
JUNG Heesu
Potser Design
PPG