BLANK

Artist I Yooree Yang & Laure Catugier
Curator I Gauthier Lesturgie
Date I March 20 - April 03. 2015
Asia contemporary art platform NON Berlin

« Vladimir : And Where were we yesterday evening according to you Estragon : How would I know ? In another compartment. There’s no lack of void. » (1)

In vis-à-vis, Laure Catugier and Yooree Yang’s works look profoundly different : either through their aesthetic, the medium or else the impressions we get out of them. Yet, common curiosities lead them over shared ground; notably towards an expanded sense of architecture and space, whether constructed or conceived, built or imagined.

The paths of these two young artists also show similar trajectories. Laure Catugier was born in Toulouse (France), where she studied architecture and art before choosing to settle in Berlin. Yooree Yang also lives and works in the German capital city, after spending her childhood in Jeju in South Korea and studying art in Marseille (France). Interested in developing exchanges between Asia and West Europe, while attempting to avoid stereotypical discourses, NON Berlin perceived a potential dialogue between the two artists.

This exhibition project is also fed by these displacements through the mix of languages : between French (shared and chosen by the two artists), English, German and Korean. A constant translation game leads us to articulate the project around one word: « blank », itself suggesting multiple meanings. Some of the possible derivations of this English term enable us to build precise logics between these two expressions.

Absolutely physical, the work of both artists introduces us the presence of absence (2). This paradox escapes from the poetic sphere of the language to find plastic expression in space.

blanc 흰색 emptiness 허무 néant silence nothingness 없는 lack white 공동(空洞) vide vacuum 무음(無音) muet 여백 ghost void 무(無) absence effacer 부재 black hole blank slate 진공 erase perdu 블랙홀 vacant 지우다 zero mission 아무것도 없는 margin aveugle 침묵 blind 자유 devoid rien 울림 trou noir lost dépourvu 사라진 none libre uninhabited 공간 무성(無聲) oubli air mute marge 영(0) nothing table rase 무아(無我) ajourée 타불라 라사 lacking inhabité 공백 결핍 désert 상상 tabula rasa fantôme 삭제하다 nought omission 망각 espace 환영(幻影) manque 텅빈곳 space unoccupied 무인( 無人) oblivion etc

(1) Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1952, p. 85.
(2) See Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the image, New York, Fordham University Press, 2005, p.59.