"Alice! Take this childlike tale. And gently lay it down with a soft touch. In that place where childhood dreams grow intertwined with the bands of mystical memories. Like a faded wreath worn by a pilgrim made of flowers picked from a distant land..."

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

​​​​​

There are moments when we feel a sudden, piercing sensation in our hearts from a passing scene or a casually viewed photograph. It is not a grand teaching sentence or a resplendent rhetorical landscape. It is the doll we played with as a child, the comic book we read over and over again, the plastic sword... These trivial things record our lives and mark the passage of time. When we encounter them again, we embark on another time journey into the past. The memories of that time are not the same as those from the past but bring us to familiar yet different layers. Hence, revisiting that world makes us newly joyful and excited. Like Marcel tasting a piece of madeleine dipped in tea or Alice encountering the White Rabbit on a sunny day...



GalleryJJ is pleased to present Hello? Alice! with the latest works by Yura Seo and Jeongmee Yoon, revolving around our distant memories, fantasies, and hidden desires, comprising paintings and photographs. Seo and Yoon, who pop in form and color, use accumulated images to delicately and playfully unravel the desires for fictional images prevalent in our era, the tastes of modern people, and the hidden, secret memories within them.

​

Jeongmee Yoon's Pink & Blue Project addresses societal conventions and gender identity through the color-coded notion of 'blue for boys, pink for girls'. It extends to consumerism, awakening us to the power structures and media's indiscriminate acceptance that standardizes our lives. Nonetheless, the pink and blue screens are splendid and delightful, stimulating fairytale-like imaginations. The objects that fill the screen, almost overwhelmingly, include childhood storybooks, Barbie dolls, Hello Kitty stationery, Superman characters, and dinosaurs, inviting people to meet the repressed inner child within themselves.

​

For Yura Seo, books have been a symbol permeating her entire life, starting from the Yura's Diary she created in elementary school. Seo uses books as a medium to infuse her desires and imagination. Her work began with the sculptural beauty she felt from arranged books and the imagined play with toy blocks. She embeds fragmented images and texts between the piled books, giving them meaning. As the artist says, it is "a process of unraveling meanings like a riddle or a hidden picture." Her colorful and text-rich books express her ever-growing desires that are more vivid because they cannot escape reality. Although piled up, her books are not heavy, and the entangled meanings are rhythmic and joyous.

​

Juyeon Kang, Gallery JJ Director

translated by Brett Lee