The Codex of Returns: Kam Min kyung, Park Ji Won, Bae Yoon Hwan, Yoon Yu Seong, Cho Ho Young, Hoh Woo Jung
Chapter II is pleased to announce The Codex of Returns from 10 July to 14 August 2025. The exhibition features six Korean artists: Kam Min Kyung, Park Ji Won, Bae Yoon Hwan, Yoon Yu Seong, Cho Ho Young, and Hoh Woo Jung. It highlights their diverse artistic approaches to documenting the processes and repetitions inherent in their practices through painting and installation.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Manifesto for Maintenance Art (1969)—famously known for a piece of white and black photography that captures a woman on her knees pouring water down over the stairs—is a declaration discussing labour and its value in the realm of contemporary art. Ukeles, an artist and a member of a family, paid attention to how the importance of maintenance, repair and repetition of ordinary labour was ousted by the pursuit of newness in the name of renovation and development. This monumental work, achieved by the performance in a museum, declared daily labour as art and made activities related to labour one of the distinctive elements in the current art scene. Thus, by breaking the boundary between labour and art, it managed to extend the territory of contemporary art.
Chapter II curates the exhibition, The Codex of Returns, to provide an opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of labour as a notion and, at the same time, a practical action through diverse works of art. Firstly, the paintings by Yoon Yu Seong(Overlaps of O, 2022) and Hoh Woo Jung(Lines 8, 2024) suggest that the overlaps of lines drawn by traces can create a consistent shape. In this context, they are anti-narrative results caused by the accumulation of repetitive actions; furthermore, these unintentional images can be regarded as a record of performance itself. For(Stand still , 2020), Cho Ho Young lets a metal sphere constantly roll on a conveyor belt, based on the symbolic significance of where the electric power of the motor offsets the gravitational force with pinpoint accuracy. The work presents the exhausting side of a repetitive action, which is one of the core characteristics of labour, as emphasised by Ukeles, mentioned above, in motion.
The paintings by Bae Yoon Hwan(Golden Soup, 2017) and Park Ji Won(Restricted Scene 3, 2023)explore the places where actual labour occurs and various aspects accompanying the occurrences. The depiction of mine workers sitting around a diner table and having soup made of gold that they mined a while ago, seemingly conveys a satire that sabotages the system of capitalism. (I Was His Metaphor the Back of Thersites, 2021), a painting by Kam Min Kyung, describes a close-up view of a body part, stressing its heavy and dull impression. As it contrasts and overlaps with a figure standing without facial expression by an airport facility which processes passengers' baggage in Restricted Scene 3, displayed next to it, the work seems to indifferently imply the status of a body that is degraded and objectified as a device from a point of view prioritising means of production.
