An Absent Place — Hosu Lee

Title: An Absent Place
Place: Group Exhibition ≪We May Be Separated Like Isalnd, But≫, Daegu Art Factory, South Korea
Date: 12/10/2024 - 2/26/2025
Format: site-specific installation

An Absent Place: Toward a Non-Conceptual Sense of Place

What kind of meaning can a “place” composed solely of objects and materials—absent of human-centered thought—hold? And how might such a place offer a sensory experience of space and time that escapes conceptual definition?

Conventionally, a place is understood as a spatiotemporal marker imbued with sociocultural values and specific meanings. For something to be called a place, it must presuppose a measurable physical scope, a clear purpose, and a temporal framework reducible to numerical units. In this sense, the space-time we perceive is inherently reliant on an anthropocentric system of symbols and social conventions—an imagined construct we call “place.”

Yet this conception is ultimately linear, limited, and incomplete. An Absent Place seeks to move beyond these boundaries by exploring a place composed purely of things and matter, liberated from social meaning and symbolic function. The work subverts traditional, human-centered notions of place, instead proposing a sensory encounter with an open, non-conceptual spatiotemporal experience.

Curated by Yeni Ma, Dokyung Kim, and Hwa Yeun Jung, and co-participated with 20 other artists