Talking About Dreams, Happiness, and Love

Living in an age of modern capitalism, we respond to material things and try to find happiness in them. But because the happiness objects give is fleeting, we come to crave them again and again, until we start to doubt the quality and durability of that happiness. In the end, we try to break free of capital and seek a solid, lasting happiness that material things alone cannot provide.

What, then, of dreams? Fully realizing a dream is no easy thing. A dream is an expression of what cannot be easily attained, what lies out of reach — the crystallization of will and longing for what we cannot possess.

Everyone is born with a vessel for love in their heart. Only by filling that vessel generously with good deeds, tolerance, and love can we share that love with others. But the contemporary world we live in is far too chaotic a place to fill and share love in. Excessive market logic, terrorism and war, racism, the gap between rich and poor, religious conflict, environmental pollution — negative issues pile up, and in a rigid reality marked by a reified world and individualism, modern people wander through unrelenting daily life carrying an empty vessel of love.

Even for those who dream and love in order to be "happy," hardship, adversity, and real problems lie behind and throughout that process — so even though dream, happiness, and love are called humanity's ultimate values, many people today live having forgotten them. Through their work, the artists try to speak of the dream, the sweet happiness, and the love we have been forgetting.

Daeho Kook reinterprets the contemporary material world anew by changing how we see the world and landscape, through blurred boundaries, out-of-focus scenery, and unstable compositions. Jonggu Kim, working in the singular technique of grinding down iron — a symbol of modern material civilization — with his own hands, prompts reflection on a society that has run only after development and growth. Hyeongno Song expresses the dreams and hopes of the contemporary person in a way that is at once surreal and hyper-realistic, sturdy and fairy-tale-like. Heum Lee renders sweet, lovable objects — candy and cakes that delight our taste, sparkling crystal that enchants our sight — with meticulous, delicate precision. Sungwon Jung offers lyrical, fantastical landscapes in place of a hard, dark reality, posing questions about purity, love, and happiness through his own intricate depictions. Together, these artists will captivate the viewer's sensibility and lead them into a world of pure dreams, happiness, and love.

These works, which recall days full of love and happiness and stir dreams, will restore lost memories to people living in this era, while offering them a space of their own happiness and love, and a moment of healing.

- **Exhibiting Artists** — Daeho Kook, Jonggu Kim, Hyeongno Song, Heum Lee, Sungwon Jung