Yoonkee & Guhong's Guhong & Yoonkee

WHY VISIT

Paintings created under rules and conditions such as "Draw 9 circles on the canvas and fill each circle with a different color" and "Play acoustic guitar for the canvas to hear" will be exhibited. This exhibition, titled Guhong & Yoonkee, opens on July 3rd at Gallery Jiwooheon. 'Yoonkee and Guhong' is the name of a web-based music duo formed in 2023 by Kim Yoonkee and Min Guhong. Kim Yoonkee (hereafter Yoonkee), who debuted in 2000, has been actively working internationally as a musician, painter, and poet in countries including the UK and Japan. Min Guhong (hereafter Guhong) works as an editor and programmer at Ahn Graphics and Workroom, while also running his company Min Guhong Manufacturing and a coding language course called New Order. For over a decade, they have been supporting each other's activities by filling in the 'gaps' beyond their individual abilities, collaborating on performances and designs. Recently, they formed a duo and are presenting Guhong & Yoonkee as their first step. Yoonkee and Guhong prepared this exhibition out of curiosity about what would happen if artists, following the development of AI technology, designed rules and conditions like prompt engineers and created works accordingly. Guhong, a programmer, reveals his primary form of expression, coding, while Yoonkee candidly displays the painting format he has approached simply and comfortably. The process of creating the works is simple. Guhong creates 20 arbitrary rules and conditions, and Yoonkee combines the items he likes to personally paint 20 pieces. Notably, Guhong's rules include not only 'codes' for brush strokes but also actions like playing music for the canvas or discussing economics with it. Here, the coding method leads to a human twist that amplifies the analog aspect. Can the audience discern which canvas listened to Yoonkee's music? Can the canvas confess that it had a sincere conversation about economics with Yoonkee? Their attempt, which makes one imagine personified canvases, is also an optimistic thought experiment about the coexistence of digital and analog. This is why music or stories can be read in Yoonkee's paintings mediated by Guhong's coding. Additionally, four paintings by Yoonkee and two media works by Guhong will be exhibited. One of Guhong's works, Twenty Ways to Fall in Love with Canvas, shows the codes applied to Yoonkee's paintings flickering through kinetic typography. Visitors can deduce how these codes were applied to each of Yoonkee's paintings. Meanwhile, in the exhibition space, music first released on 'Yoonkee and Guhong's' website (https://www.yoonkeeguhong.com/) will be played randomly along with unreleased music. Yoonkee and Guhong described this exhibition as "improvised melodies drawn on a score of rules, twenty variables created by one algorithm." It sounds like an incantation suggesting that conforming to the inevitable technology of AI will open up possibilities for rich enjoyment rather than creating humans with submissive selves without will. This premise raises the fundamental question of "what questions to ask and what to enjoy in the face of rapidly changing technological environments." Thus, Guhong & Yoonkee presents results born more humanly within a mechanically generated framework, offering a light-hearted outlook on the future of art.