2016
Hanok renovation, furniture, flooring, beverage concept, toilet, etc.

(*Hanok: traditional Korean building)

During the renovation of the Art Sonje Center in 2016, I was invited to reframe and renovate the existing Hanok building in the backyard. The idea was to transform the building into a space of dialogue, by inviting people to rest or have a beer,
or by hosting events such as presentations.

“I kind of like the fact that the Hanok at Art Sonje is not a historical Hanok building but a new construction built in the 1990s. It is a re-interpretation of something traditional—thus a copy of sorts. The fact that it is a “fake” Hanok makes it more interesting to me than it would have been a real, century-old Hanok. The question of copy, remake, reinterpretation and divergence became the starting point for this project. It is a question dealing with authenticity and thinking of copies as different versions of reality. Instead of assuming the copy as opposed to the authentic or the original, we can think of copies as translations, as words referring to the same thing in different languages, which can be found in the linoleum floor that imitates wood, the hand-painted faux-marble counter, and the metal shelf that reflects and distorts the appearance of the space. Two types of tables were also re-interpreted and combined—plastic tables normally used in street Pojang Macha settings and traditional Korean Duriban tables. To translate The Parallax Hanok with a photograph—it is connected to another recent work of mine, Jun Yang meets Jun Yang. Where I meet people with the same name as mine. All of them are originals and copies at the same time; different versions of the same name.”