Real or Hallucinated, Two Images on the Forehead Hyo Gyoung Jeon Humans have two eyes, each with its own perspective. Although these two eyes recognize their distinct visual perspectives independently, the brain immediately incorporates the two images received by the eyes as a single, unified vision. Whenever problems arise with integrating these images, which can cause a person to perceive them as divided, the condition is known as stereopsis. This methodology is mimicked by 3D glasses, which vary perceived visual depth to generate a spatial sensibility of 2D images in 3D space. To reiterate, the human brain is capable of recognizing a singular object, despite the differences in perspective between the two eyes as well as additional sensory inputs. In technical terms, the brain focuses on distinguishing various forms by juxtaposing their edges and outlines while blurring any other visual information in a process called image segmentation. On the other hand, the brain also recognizes the presence of an interocular gap that allows the separate perspectives perceived by the eyes to be comprehended independently, which is made possible through the use of a particular tool in the process of consolidating the paired images in the brain.(1) I would argue that Muyeong Kim also factors his own interocular gap into consideration when observing things that he perceives separately by his eyes. When visiting Kim’s exhibition, House on Glabella (2022), viewers observe various things one after another in Kim’s works, including individuals that appear as if posing for portraits. Each of the depicted objects does not inherently indicate any meaning with regard to the viewer’s expectations. Moreover, grasping precisely where objects are situated in Kim’s works is not always apparent, nor how they may be contextualized. Amid these conditions, Kim’s images are often composed fragmentarily; the person who holds the camera and sees various objects never pauses to stare at a single thing, but keeps moving in correlation with the flow of his thoughts so that his surroundings and those of the objects continually change. His video works, which are characterized by these aforementioned qualities, durations of each short are either relatively brief or much longer than would be typically expected. Kim is keen to investigate the various processes of perceiving and observing objects by absorbing the visual information they contain and focusing his attention on the objects themselves. The artist, as the individual holding the camera (or directing the camera’s gaze), scrutinizes the manner in which people or objects placed appear in front of him. Indeed, he seems to be captivated by his oblivious admiration of objects. While being honest about this fascination, the artist simultaneously expands his thoughts into a mind-map in the same way that a vine creeps up a wall. To me, it never seemed particularly important to understand the artist’s intention in a structured way, such as an exhibition with a predetermined path or a video with a linear structure. Instead, I aimed to participate in such disoriented encounters without seeking to understand Kim’s thought processes, which may or may not ultimately exist in a structured form. One can imagine how Kim perceives objects in his serial photograph Why You Two Never Look at Me (2021). Kim took these photos with an iPhone while shaking it, in an effort to bring troubles to its exposure control of the camera. In the photos, Kim’s subjects appear to be shuddered across several thin layers, yielding an astigmatic visual sensation wherein the surroundings of the photo’s subject are obscured by an extremely dark brown background. This generates an effect not unlike chiaroscuro(2), a compositional technique of applying strong contrast that affects the entire image, a term that entered the mainstream artistic lexicon in the 16th century and is still widely used by artists and art historians today to describe paintings and photographs. Seen this way, parallels may be drawn between Kim’s photographs and Caravaggio’s paintings from the Baroque period, particularly with regard to the nostalgia induced by Caravaggio’s deep burnt sienna colored backgrounds. Departing from conventional painting styles of the 17th century that emphasized realistic depictions of their subjects, Caravaggio deployed chiaroscuro to forge a new aesthetic that oriented the viewer’s focus toward more subjective aspects of each painting’s motifs. In Kim’s photographs, his subject seems to have been swiftly pulled to the surface from a deep abyss and suddenly exposed for all to see, which results in the blurred quality of the edges. His flat photograph projects a thin texture of multiple compressed layers that are produced by shaking the iPhone while capturing a stationary subject in order to create a brief, momentary image. Separated by an extremely short frame rate and unfolded onto a single image, Kim’s photographic methodology may be likened to the cognitive process of comprehending the two separate images received by each retina. In this way, he uses the medium of photography as a blueprint that spreads his perceptive capabilities in order to see the object, rather than taking photos as a means to display the object itself. Photographs are installed in the exhibition without frames and attached directly to the walls so that they remain extremely flat, reifying the planar properties of the thin layers accumulated in the image. Just like any other substrate, photo paper has its own distinct surface texture and thickness; when attached to the wall while still creased, this paper flashes in a manner similar to the oil-saturated paintings of the Baroque period. As if summoned to the exhibition like these dusty paintings of the past, Kim’s images seem to be stuck in a time that has long since disappeared. The photos introduced in the exhibition are encountered alongside the necessary elements for completing such thinly layered images, having suddenly escaped from somewhere unknown. Kim uses a similar mise-en-scene in his video works. Socket: Lateral Exits, Chiaroscuro as a Predicament, Dollhouse (2021) comprises images that are reflected in lenses, glasses or a piano and overlapped with each other. As suggested by the title, this video is divided into three parts; part two—“Chiaroscuro as a Predicament”—features two similar-looking female faces belonging to a mother and daughter that overlap as they gaze directly at the camera, while performers in the other two chapters of the video refrain from staring so intently and unabashedly. The overlapped figures appear against a very dark background and the camera angle pans swiftly while remaining tightly focused on each of their faces or torsos. As the camera continues its panning movement, other elements of the angle disappear except the two faces and the two faces merge into one. It is at this exact moment that the notion of the two figures’ resemblance as an ontological metaphor resonates with the artist’s observation. The video Bed Confession (2021) presents scenes captured from the top of a bed through a fresnel lens that distorts appearances. The images seen from such a vantage point would ordinarily be somewhat standard, leaving little to be misunderstood; after all, the objects commonly found in a private bedroom tend to be arranged according to very simple floor plans. In Kim’s video, however, the two protagonists begin to harbor doubts concerning their unfailing perspectives as the world around them takes on a foreign sensibility. Moreover, the presence of the person holding the camera is quite obvious from this particular angle, with the two performers following directions to look at the camera and passively move within the boundaries of the frame. Here is how Kim dissociates sensory stimuli in his work: he assigns a specific room for each part of body, or a corresponding time to focus on one’s embodied sensations as well as one’s own two eyes. This is exemplified in his performance piece House on Glabella (2022), a work that unfolds through the actions of five performers within the exhibition hall, four of whom serve as equal protagonists while the last performer assume the role of player. During the performance, noises are emitted from speakers installed for the exhibition to create the structure of the sound that fills the space. While this sound undoubtedly progresses according to the natural flow of time, its physical and spatial qualities are felt more viscerally due to the vibrations generated by their loud volume, in turn amplifying the audience’s awareness of the gallery structure itself. Aside from the performers, one person controlled the beginning and the end of the sound and two people documented the performance, the last two of whom wore clothing similar to that of the performers so that they became seamlessly integrated into the performance. When the starting time approached, the audience entered the dark exhibition space, where four performers were already sitting and standing in an exhibition space set as a stage. Individual audience members tried to find places to watch the performance while keeping appropriate distance from the performers until it reached its conclusion. Once everyone was situated, they could see that one of the performers was holding an iPhone in his mouth. Another performer took the iPhone from his mouth and stared at someone else, now holding his own iPhone as well as that of his fellow performer. The two lenses of each iPhone took the place of the performer’s eyes and thus served as essential tools for sight. Each performer’s indeterminate and expressionless body language passively allowed their muscles and joints to move like marionettes, as if being controlled by an external entity located somewhere far away. Throughout their choreographed performance that made the characters of their muscles tame, the performers lacked any sort of active or autonomous spirit. They scattered followed by their scores, gathered back together like a train, piled up their own bodies like rituals and spread out once again. The only person with any agency was final performer, acting as the player; after appearing at an unexpected point in the performance, he played the piano and sang a song before disappearing from view. His song, comprised of Kim’s lyrics and directions, was the only moment of verbal expression in the performance. The artist himself remained outside of the performance area during the entire performance, handling the performers and different elements of the performance like props. The performers embodied their characters’ attitudes of dispiritedness as nothing more than masses of mirthless, gravitated flesh. During the performance, they took a furry object which symbolized a certain animal and dismantled it, then spread the animal’s “flesh and blood” on their bodies and pantomimed the act of eating its viscera. This choreography seemed to be a sort of liturgy of lament toward the lifeless object. However, when parts of the animal’s lifeless body were transposed onto the performers’ bodies, there arose an utterly ethereal sensation of an individual human’s flesh existing as in tandem with that of others. At the performance’s climax, the four performers slowly stacked up their bodies in an apparent evocation of orgiastic imagery. Despite this, their ‘orgy’ was unaffected by any libidinal desire, but rather progressed in accordance with preplanned orders as if carrying out a ritual. Overall, my impression was that the people who participated in the exhibition, including Kim himself, appeared to be extremely close to each other, making me feel somewhat excluded as I observed them at a distance. The pervasive passivity of the performers in Kim’s videos and performance ultimately represents a ritualistic choreography commemorating an unruly power which they must obey. From a practical standpoint, this hints at the artist’s direction during the production process; for Kim, who initiates and realizes his works independently, this may also be a manifestation of his own conundrum that he projects onto himself through external forces urging him to endure. The connected and delegated sensations in House on Glabella made their repercussions felt by lingering in the exhibition as disoriented fragments. When witnessing them, I couldn’t help but contemplate the ontological quality of these fragments, as opposed to organizing them into a unified skeleton. The artist suggests the term “bad trip” in the exhibition leaflet as a means of describing a certain condition, writing about the state of a “bad trip” as equivalent to delegating sensations.(3) The use of psychedelic drugs typically generate distorted perceptions of the world and self; in instances when these effects don’t manifest as expected, particular sensations may be uncontrollably expanded or eradicated. From the late 1960s to early 1970s in California, the psychedelic movement sought new forms of expression and perspectives on essential meaning of life(4) as seen in The Trip (1967), an American film that depicts the era in which psychedelics such as LSD came into widespread public use. Paul, the film’s protagonist, takes LSD while struggling with a midlife crisis after his wife leaves him. He experiences hallucinations that induce variable emotions of joy, unfamiliarity, death and extreme fear for very short periods of time. Such hallucinations may be ephemeral, but those who use psychedelics often report that the memories of hallucinatory experiences as perceived by one’s extended senses remain intact. When visitors walk through the exhibition hall after being immersed in the exhibition’s eponymous performance, they may begin to see Kim’s works differently. Although this may only apply to people who directly encountered the performers’ energy, traces of the performance are palpable due to the presence of animal fur and sticky liquid leftover from the performance that are scattered throughout the space; more importantly, however, a strong impression can be felt of another time period in the artist’s world, which was activated in the exhibition space during the performance. Most notably, there is a sense that Kim places his story within a certain time—like Bergson’s idea of ‘duration’—that has nothing to do with the ‘objective’ time of everyday life. (There is no awareness of a specific time in Kim’s work, and in fact, almost no natural light appears in his photographs or video works, making it impossible to identify what time of day they were created—not to mention the time depicted in the works themselves.) Like people who are nocturnal, his works comprise a previously unknown layer of time that becomes aligned at intervals on the white walls of the exhibition hall so as to look to connected and activated. Whenever these phantasmagoric visions forge panoramic views within such an idiosyncratic temporality, they transcend the standard time frame of reality. This may be the temporality of the ‘trip’ for Kim: something that is innately transient, yet seems never-ending when it is underway. It is at this point that we behold the stark mortality that has been stripped of its spirit, leading us to turn inward and examine ourselves, hopelessly composed of flesh and blood though we may be, prompting a sensation that allows us to observe the visions that hover on a person’s forehead and sit between their eyes as key clues. (1) Vilayanur S. Ramachandran & Diane Rogers-Ramachandran, “Illusions: Two Eyes, Two Views" in Scientific American Mind 20, 5, 22-24 (September 2009). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/two-eyes-two-views/ (2) Referred to the National Gallery’s Glossary, London. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/chiaroscuro (3)Muyeong Kim on House on Glabella, 2022, leaflet, Museumhead, Seoul. (4) Refer to Grateful Dead’s guitarist Bob Weir’s comment from the article. E. Vulliamy, "Love and Haight", Observer Music Monthly, 20 May 2007. * Hyo Gyoung Jeon is a curator, editor, writer and translator, working in Seoul. She established an exhibition-making organization Even the Neck in Seoul, 2011 with a few of local artists, and since then she has made exhibitions and publications. She recently curated exhibitions including a group exhibition One-A-Day (2018), Heecheon Kim: Deep in the Forking Tanks (2019), Mire Lee: Carriers (2020) and Host Modded (2021). She co-edited an anthology Curating 9X0X (2021) and co-translated Self-organised (2013, Open Editions) into Korean in 2016 (Mediabus, Seoul). Jeon worked as curator at Art Sonje Center, Platform-L and Arko Art Center.