earticle

영어

This paper examines two key elements of “contraction” and “expansion” in relation to the way in which Wonil Rhee used space in his curatorial practice. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of "the fold (le pli)" in a close reading of one of his last texts published in 2010, it explores the implication of the elements in the theoretical context of Rhee's curatorial practice. Along with such concepts as “postcolonialism,” “Asianness,” “technology,” and “creative paradox,” the elements serve to deconstruct confrontations between west/non-west, the cultural colonizer/the cultural colonized, thereby challenging conventional boundaries. The logic of resistance and confrontation in Rhee's early curatorial practice has gradually given way to that of “hybridization, openness, intersection, assimilation, conciliation, and communication” through metaphors such as “thermocline” and “poktanju” (bomb drink; a kind of cocktail comparable to American boilermaker), which he addressed in the exhibition at ZKM in 2007. This show provided a turning point presenting the “pocket model,” that Rhee drew from Deleuze's concept of the fold. Analyzing the exhibitions Rhee curated after the ZKM show, this paper delves into the notion of flexible space, which constantly oscillates between “contraction” and “expansion,” a space that operates like the fold of Deleuze. There is a cycle of innumerable inflection in the world of the fold, creating decentralized, uncertain, and diverse spaces. The inside of the fold is the space of potentiality where differences keep arising but are not realized. This space is after all realized from potential space through the systemization and rearrangement of time. The fold is like the “organ without the body” or the “egg.” This paper suggests that Rhee’s “thermocline” or the “pocket model” unfolds the movement of creation where the fold transforms itself through a repetition of “contraction” and “expansion.”