At first glance, artists Yee Soo-kyung and Yangachi appear to inhabit entirely different artistic worlds: One works with roses, crowns and religious iconography, while the other investigates radio frequencies, magnetic fields and invisible infrastructures.
Yet "Fail Better," the exhibition at Forum and Space in Seoul held from April 30 to June 13, brought the two together in an exploration of reality, perception and the uncertain future shaped by rapidly evolving technologies.
Curated by Kim Yoon-kyung, the exhibition took its title from Samuel Beckett's 1983 prose text “Worstward Ho” and its famous phrase, "Fail better."
For Kim, the exhibition emerged from concerns over how artificial intelligence is transforming human perception. But rather than focusing on AI as a tool, the exhibition examines broader questions surrounding reality and representation. "Yee deals with things that appear intensely real but are ultimately conceptual," Kim said during a walkthrough. "Yangachi, on the other hand, works with things that seem unreal but actually exist."
Yee, whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, painting and video, presented digitally mediated works centered on recurring motifs such as roses, crowns and the Virgin Mary.
Yee's media work “Moonlight Crown” continuously transforms according to real-time environmental data, including lunar cycles and weather conditions.
"What we think of as the original rose no longer exists," Kim said. "We keep projecting meanings onto something that has continually changed over time (in the media art)."
If Yee interrogates symbolic systems, Yangachi turns his attention to the material conditions underpinning today's seemingly immaterial digital world. Works such as “Ghost,” “Cephalous Ghost” and “Acephalous Ghost” explored the hidden infrastructures that sustain contemporary technologies, from data networks to surveillance systems and AI.
The artist has increasingly focused on what he describes as "media art without electricity or electronics," probing forms of connection that exist beyond screens and devices, according to Kim.
"When we think of media art, we often associate it with electricity and electronics, but Yangachi asks what the most primitive form of media might be," Kim said.
"Media is ultimately about mediation. Connecting people and things. He asks whether that necessarily has to rely on electricity or electronics."
Kim said the exhibition embraced "precise misalignment" as an artistic strategy in a world increasingly obsessed with producing answers.
"I don't think art exists to produce successful outcomes," Kim said.
"In a situation where AI can accurately calculate everything and provide answers, art cannot compete by trying to do the same."
yunapark@heraldcorp.com