For the first solo exhibition in Space*c: coreana art & culture this year, 'Memory Theater' by Mioon is presented. Duo group of Min Sun Kim and Moon Sun Choi, Mioon studied at Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. They have held solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bonn and Kunstverein Coesfeld, and participated the exhibition at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Museum, Korea, Busan Biennale, Media City Seoul, ZKM and Liverpool Biennale. This is the first solo exhibition in a museum after moving back to Seoul in 2006, new 6 objet installations and 3 video works are on view. 

While Mioon's video installations after the mid of 2000s mainly focused on a social meaning of 'the crowd,' their works after the late 2000s cover two keywords, 'memory' and 'theater.' The exhibition 'Memory Theater' introduces 11 video installations providing 'theater' as a visual frame based on mechanism, allegorical structure and effect of memory. Memory theater in the past as 'memory storage' to pass down the cyclopedic knowledge is transformed into large scale installation, Mioon's major artwork 'Auditorium,' consisting of strange images of shadow and objets. Illogically combined images of shadow with no constant correlation fill the exhibition space with warmness including symbols of personal and historical memory and places in it. Overlapped and segmented images also remind of the structure of memory. 

Memory the artists understand is always unstable and liquid. It can be stored, ignored or distorted, or covered by the other one like palimpsest structure. As 'politics of memory,' it can be distorted by invisible gaze. Mioon catches allegorical structure of such complicated and liquid memory through 11 video installations. In Mioon's exhibition, suggesting lots of idea and expression of memory, my memory, a moment of history, group memory of our society, and symbol and places in memory can be meaningfully called in a present view. 

*image (left)
Auditorium (Template A-Z), 2014
Cabinet, Objects, Lights, Motors, 700x500x320cm
courtesy of the artist