The Art of Learning

Founded in 2014, PIE is a collective and a space run by Park Hyunjung, Don Sunpil, Min Guhong, and Son Jooyoung. Grounded in the diverse methodologies and experimental practices of artists, PIE oers practical curricula for artists. Instead of focusing on self-development programs, the space aims to support participants in developing their own questions as well as training their thinking practices.

For this exhibition, PIE proposes an approach to learning through language and documentation. PIE Loves You, Anyway. You Love PIE, Anyway. is a collection of thirty posters containing sentences about learning written by PIE tutors. It functions as a kind of manifesto that confesses a love for art through words and writing, which are understood as foundational media for learning. Min Guhong, an organizer at PIE, created artartart.wiki , a digital platform for sharing, using the text file-based PHP wiki engine wikiwikiwiki.wiki. Without complex setups, users can compose texts and generate hyperlinks. Following these links reveals how the documents are linked to one another. artartart.wiki connects the exhibition, artists, and viewers in real time through documents, expanding their relationships while functioning as a public sphere that continually produces narratives about how art comes into being. This project will continue after the exhibition closes. In Search of Lost Sentences is a text-based installation that tracks and collects sentences dispersed throughout the space using QR codes and a web application. The QR codes enable the distribution and publication of the text, linking the acts of walking, searching, saving, and losing. Viewers can discover QR codes hidden within the gallery space and collect short sentences about the School in operation, thereby engaging in active learning.

PIE is both a participant in the exhibition and a platform for human networks, connecting the exhibiting artists as hyperlinks do. For example, it assumed the role of “mate” for Mockcamp, supporting the sustainability of art collectives and the operation of independent spaces through the pre-exhibition program, Learning with Peers. PIE provided support for Mockcamp while it recruited participants for and developed an “exhibition installation practice,” which is presented in the exhibition. Another contribution was an invitation to Ginkgo Fruit Social Club, a group of young visual artists formed around a shared interest in subcultures. The group was given a space by Studio PIE in 2025 to conduct free experimentation. Through such efforts, PIE functions as a (non-institutional) educational platform. Its endeavors are rooted in researching conditions and environments that enable artists to remain independent while fostering meaningful relationships.

Mockcamp, Mockcamp , 2026, storage space and partition by Nayœng Kim, Jayeon Kim, Juyeon Park, Yeojin Yun, Sang-hee Lee, leo je-eon lee, Hyunryeong Chun, and Jieum Choi, live streaming, individual pieces and collaborative practice, 1200×685×390cm. Installation view of Group installation ①.

The story of Mockcamp’s origin reveals the nature of the group. When Juyeon Park could not recover her deposit on a private home in Hyehwa-dong, she transformed it into an art space for everyone. After learning from construction workers how to install partitions and tile floors, she renovated the space herself, creating an art space with partitions for exhibitions; Mockcampsite Hyehwa opened its doors in 2025. The goal was to enable artists to experiment with different installation methods and provide a space for those without studio access. Through a first-come, first-served system, interested individuals can rent the space for free without any credential review. The only condition is that participants must organize a team of three or more and together practice installation for a week. They then set up and document an installation each day. Mockcamp strives to be open-source and publicly accessible. Participants become active facilitators, even if only for a week. The goal of Mockcamp is to foster collegial relationships.

The four artists—Nayœng Kim, Jayeon Kim, Juyeon Park, and Jieum Choi—who met at Mockcampsite Hyehwa have formed a group with Yeojin Yun, Sang-hee Lee, leo je-eon lee, and Hyunryeong Chun, who were recruited through an open call. Together, they will

These eight Mockcamp members will engage in installation practices by changing the show every four days during the exhibition period. Overturning the notion of a completed exhibition, they will repeat the process of installing, exhibiting, and deinstalling in collaboration with their colleagues, presenting the ongoing transformation of their work to viewers. Collectively, they will build structures, support each other in installing the shows, and allow their peers to intervene in the process. These activities at Mockcampsite Hyehwa will be streamed live. The two-month-long group practices and rehearsals will involve failures and modifications, which constitute a form of experimentation. The time spent on this project may lead to subsequent projects.

The group Happy Class was formed in 2023 by six painters with a shared interest in drawing: Kyoungho Koh, Seunggyu Kim, Miyeon Ra, Jihyun Im, Sungju Ham, and Yerang Hwang. The members began with the determination to follow Bahc Yiso’s drawing curriculum as a means of training themselves. Happy Class meets every month, with each person sharing their drawing book, posing questions, and responding to them. The gatherings are not for evaluation but allow the members to be each other’s audience and serve as motivation to pursue their own methodologies.

Drawings documents the daily work performed by Happy Class. They are drawings of perceptions and thoughts encountered each day. Viewers can flip through the pages of the sketchbooks on display, which reveal drafts that precede final images, drawings as ideas, and drawing as a comprehensive medium, thereby revealing the pleasure of the creative process.

The work that fills the wall is Paintings , composed of works selected by the members of Happy Class based on impressions and responses shared among themselves. The act of selecting works by colleagues allows the members to look at their own work from another perspective: that of their colleagues. This gesture resonates with many aspects of creative practice, such as returning to one’s studio and persisting in an artistic practice supported by one’s peers.

Paintings invited artist Jiwon Kim to participate to expand the idea of colleagues. Kim is a teacher and someone with experience in the field; He has also been a long-time observer and colleague of the members of Happy Class. For this exhibition, the group held a meeting with Kim. He shared various stories: His struggles as an artist, routines that are helpful for his practice, drawing exercises, teaching methodologies, and drawing exchanges with his artist colleague. Happy Class’s work is accompanied by Kim’s pieces in the exhibition: A Desk for Designing a Brighter Future (2001), inspired by an image of an installation by Bahc Yiso found in an art magazine (the title is the same as that of Bahc’s piece); In Front of Similar Wall (2002), a portrait of artists belonging to different eras; and Geunyang Pul and Jazz (2026), a text describing drawing exchanges with Bahc, as well as related anecdotes. Kim and his memories of Bahc cross paths with Happy Class, forming a loose network of relationships within this drawing community that the group has enriched.

In the fall of 2022, Rim Park, Yuna Lee, and Yoonan began a manhwa [Korean term for comics and print cartoons] collective, Kuroda, at a cafe in Itaewon; they set out to observe and produce a wide range of works while sharing critical discussions and creative practices both within and beyond the community. Since becoming active in 2023, the members—an artist, a writer, and a mangaka—have explored the medium of manhwa, a shared interest, through regular gatherings, independent publications, and exhibitions.

Kuroda has led manhwa workshops where participants collectively decide on topics and genres and produce drawings in their distinctive styles. It also organizes gatherings that include the viewing of manhwas and the documenting of discussions. Other activities include drawing workshops, inspired by the culture of secondary creation—popular in fan communities—in which characters and settings are appropriated from existing works. For a pre-workshop, Kuroda invited friends working in the visual arts, moving images, and music to create a short manhwa. The collective invented an imaginary character named ‘Guroda,’ and their friends contributed to shaping its personality and role within a fictional world. A collection of short manhwa pieces created throughout this process will be published as an anthology titled So, I … . Within this collective process,one can observe forms of emotional bonding specific to fan cultures that are grounded in the sharing of subcultural interests. This raises a question: Is there an equivalent form of such a community within the art world, that is, communities or cultures grounded in this kind of bond and these affinities?

This question leads to Kuroda’s Love Letter , which depicts how art communities approach art and their practice, as well as the collective’s unconditional love for art. This piece is a manhwa centered on self-organization.

manhwa books, is a participatory piece in which viewers can create their own love letters. Just as manhwa finds its way into a reader’s heart, the piece invites viewers to articulate and express their affection toward someone they hold dear.

Curating School Seoul, Learning Inside, Outside, Upside Down, 2026, objects collected from participants, printed text on the wall, dimensions variable

Curating School Seoul oers a space for those who want to create to gather and learn. It is an experiment in schooling through curation, exploring the points of encounter between contemporary creative work and education. After operating a pilot semester in 2013, Curating School Seoul returned in 2023. Currently, it is run by Sejin Park, Jaeyong Park, and Eunsong Lee. Ten core members are selected each semester based on what they wish to create, rather than their art-related backgrounds or education credentials. The program offers workshops, seminars, public lectures, site visits, and practical training related to each semester’s keyword: curating, school, or Seoul.

Learning Inside, Outside, Upside Down traces how each participant in The Art of Learning came to be a creative practitioner. Curating School Seoul conducted two interviews with each person about their learning process and how the group that person belonged to began. The questions were seemingly trivial yet personal: When did they first feel the desire to create? What had they learned during and outside formal education and from whom? Which places, objects, artworks, and events inspired their learning endeavors? How did they meet one another, and what were their first impressions? From these interviews with self-organizing artists, Curating School Seoul compiled words, objects, books, and images that inspired them, offering a glimpse into myriad moments of learning that shaped their practice. Diagrams that are also collages, created from this material, show how practitioners’ learning, life, and care are intimately connected.

Rat Journal, T angerine Crow Milk, 2026, painted plaster, non-foaming polyurethane, brass rods, 2.5×3×3cm, 4×3×6cm, 10×7×4cm

Lee (Looc), and Jiwon Yu (Bbyabbya Kim) as a study group focused on art criticism. It began publishing art-related texts online in 2016. Since 2022, it has operated a physical space known as YPC SPACE. Motivated by its collective endeavors of exhibition viewing, discussion, and writing, YPC positions itself as a site of learning, conversation, observing, and creating, and presenting art and its context.

Since its foundation in 2021, Rat Journal (Koo Jaehoi, Choi Boryeon, Choi Joowon, and Choi Heejung) has held private meetings while producing and publishing online texts on art and the conditions of art making. Originating from the idea that “the conventional modes of writing and knowledge production in the art world are in line with many aspects of predatory journals,” Rat Journal aspires to be a “pseudo-society,” and it imitates the articles of incorporation and organization chart of a journal. Its writings—urban legends or folklore about the art world—resemble rats haunting the city, exposing underlying conditions and realities of the art world.

where texts can be read, written, or exchanged with objects. Tangerine Crow Milk is a work in which viewers write about one of the following sculptures on the table—a tangerine, a crow’s head, or a walking banana-flavored milk—and leave their text in exchange for the chosen object.

Imagining a Rat is a sculptural piece originating from the images evoked during the conception of a story titled “How to Be a Rat.” This humorous work is based on the idea that trying to become a rat is not much different from living an artist’s life. A Wise Way of Living Together with the Little Ones of the City is a collection of short stories in a children’s book format about schools, lessons, and learning. The collection also includes An Epistemic Rat Hopping Undetected between Twelve States of Knowing, A Rat Hole of One’s Own, Self-Directed Learning, The Full Moon Culminates at Midnight, in which readers encounter fables about education and school.

Making Art in Seoul is a text-based work in various formats that reflect on YPC’s experiences operating a small scale nonprofit art space. It tells stories—enriched with imagination and humor—drawn from their experiences, such as maintaining their identity as an independent space, sustaining relationships as a collective, and engaging with the art world while both utilizing and critiquing the institutional framework.

Birdcall, Living Room , 2026, books at a reading station, printed materials, objects, website, monitor, keyboard, computer mouse, dimensions variable

Run by Jisu Lee, Birdcall is a space for study and a community that provides materials and tools related to art and design. Although managed by a single individual, Birdcall invites diverse individuals to organize workshops and study together. Functioning as both a library and a playground, Birdcall aims to maintain accessibility and ease of editing, drawing on the ethos of the early World Wide Web. It constitutes a self-sustaining educational ecosystem, prompted by the need to design a study-oriented environment.

Living Room is a library featuring the collections of Birdcall and Seoul Reading Room, as well as books recommended by the exhibition artists, alongside books about art and education. Networks are formed among diverse objects, including paperbacks accompanied by objects related to their topics, office supplies, frames, and ephemera* in the library. The classification of books here does not follow conventional systems (by subject, genre, or author); rather, they are organized spontaneously, playfully, and poetically. Audiences, as readers, may discover unexpected connections between the material in hand and other items in the space. The self-editable website by Birdcall reclassifies the materials presented in the exhibition space, generating alternative pathways and sign systems for learning. In collaboration with Birdcall, Seoul Reading Room gathers readings on learning, offering them as printed matter and a bundle of links.

Material Library, Material Library , 2026, experimental materials by Luna Kim, Jeman Seo, Jiwon Jeong, Soyoon Chang, Heewon Kim, Seunghwan Baek, and Jaehyun Bang, dimensions variable

Material Library launched its third term in 2024. Since then, fifteen artists have conducted sixteen research projects, the results of which are uploaded to the web as open-source information. This community aims to support material research and experimentation in early stages of an art project. As a means of encouraging practical experience and exploration outside academia, the course was designed as an extracurricular activity at a college. Participants in this exhibition are Luna Kim, Jeman Seo, Jiwon Jeong, Soyoon Chang, Heewon Kim, Seunghwan Baek, and Jaehyun Bang. The group is led by Kwantaeck Park and Solin Yoon.

For the exhibition, Material Library presents five material research projects—painting,drawing, printmaking, photography, and 3D scanning—selected from three years of work by the group. They compile various objects derived from their research and give the exhibition space the appearance of a studio. For the seven participating artists, medium experimentation has been a process of documenting materialities and their combinations to ultimately find what suits their own practice. It is, in a way, a collaboration between the artist and the medium during the process of establishing methodologies.

Together, Luna Kim, Jeman Seo, and Jiwon Jeong studied pigment, binder, and surface while sharing different test results for the surfaces they tried. Soyoon Chang creates drawings on plaster and presents her development in a sculptural form. Heewon Kim has designed a non equipment printmaking technique and continues to experiment with different methods of printing tools and texture making. Material Library also includes research that interprets the medium as a technical surface. Seunghwan Baek explores the temporality of photography and the moving image through his photographs. Shuffling between predictable images and live images captured from the gallery, he creates “a new temporality triggered by photography.” Jaehyun Bang transforms the body into various surfaces through 3D printed sculpture and projection mapping, revealing the physical and psychological gaps between the processes. The research data is archived for viewing in the exhibition space.

Kim Ji-won (Seokundong), Dani Daeun Kim (Artist, Factory2 Management Team), Jaeyong Park (Seoul Reading Room), Jisoo Lee (Birdcall), Kwon Suzin (Designer)

Happy Class (Kyoungho Koh, Seunggyu Kim, Miyeon Ra, Jihyun Im, Sungju Ham, and Yerang Hwang), Jihyun Kim (Independent Curator)

Mockcamp (Nayœng Kim, Jayeon Kim, Juyeon Park, Yeojin Yun, Sang-hee Lee, leo je-eon lee, Hyunryeong Chun, and Jieum Choi), Kwon Hajeong (Independent Curator), Yuki Konno (Art Critic)