Art Space Pool presents as its premier Pool production of 2014, the exhibition of Mihye Cha and Jin Han 'The Exterior of Gray: Mihye Cha, Jin Han.' Both artists capture with acute sense of view, the relation with the outer world based on personal pain or experience and unique sensibility. Painting, drawing(Jin Han) and photograph, video installation(Mihye Cha) works including recent pieces extend the gap inexpressible in language, through formative expression. Figures and landscapes that appear on their screen are commonly placed in uncertain time and space with no clue to lead the viewers. From these images ‘in the state of zero gravity’ where there is no concrete context or situation, we can find traces of wandering here and there. This attitude of roaming about the vague borderline allows us to view the object from a sensuous dimension when perceiving invisible existence or state.

Outside of the gray zone
The works of Mihye Cha and Jin Han conjure up the oddity of life and death mingled together, like a little bud sprouting at the end of a dried up twig. Their world is outside and inside, reminding us of certain ‘dimness’ like the shadow. The common ground of both artists would be creating ‘images’ of the impossibility of distinction and putting shape to the idea about the non-distinction. Samuel Beckett had expressed this gray-darkness with no distinction between darkness and light: “It is because there is not only darkness but also light that our situation becomes inexplicable.” The gray as the empty space which is the base of all existence, is a vague concept difficult to define, to classify or distinguish. But this very characteristic allows ideas to sprout on the impossible distinction, thus determines the location of existence paradoxically. It means gray area can be the location. Therefore, the declarative noun announcing the title of the exhibition, the ‘exterior’ of gray, penetrates the whole exhibition.  

On the opening day of the exhibition, the roles of the audience and actor will be dissolved in and out of the venue. A performance combining dream images, (Mihye Cha), will be performed and a wall painting(Jin Han) will be painted during the exhibition period, on the old wall of the storage outside the venue, making use of the traces left on the wall. This approach of no distinction between the indoor or outdoor of the venue is also the ‘starting point’ of the work, stimulating the artist’s imagination. It shows the orientation of Han’s art world, expanding from a specific object or phenomenon to the exterior, and further onto the relation with the others. The viewers would have emotional echoes in their personal contexts.  
- Eunbi Jo(Chief Curator, Art Space Pool)

*image (left)
Mihey Cha
A face without a face, 2014
16mm, B&W, silent, 2min
ⓒ Mihye Cha , Art Space Pool