Claire's Camera

Back in 2024, I curated a group show called Right Now, Wrong Then, named after a film by Hong Sang-soo. The show was not about Hong’s film, and it wasn’t about anything in particular. Maybe this is why I was drawn to Hong, where not much of anything seems to happen, but a life can pass by in a missed connection, in a nightcap, in a film within a film.

I’m now curating a show in Seoul, at the invitation of N/A. I’ve named this show Claire’s Camera, after another one of Hong’s films. Claire’s Camera was the first Hong film I saw, 8 or 9 years ago. Unlike most of Hong’s movies, Claire’s Camera doesn’t take place in Korea, it’s set at the Cannes Film Festival. It stars Isabelle Huppert, who happened to be there promoting a new film at the real Cannes Film Festival. Hong was also there with a small crew, and took the fortuitous opportunity to shoot with Huppert for the second time. In Hong’s fake Cannes, Huppert plays a Parisian visitor to the festival, and befriends a small network of South Korean film insiders, directors, and distribution staff. Isabelle, as Claire, does in fact have a camera, and she does shoot pictures of these characters.

Claire’s Camera bears no resemblance to my group exhibition Right Now, Wrong Then. It is more related to an exhibition I curated last year called Exquisite Corpse, with the roster of artists at King’s Leap, named after the hand drawn surrealist parlor game. This show features those same artists, plus three more, and three from N/A’s program. The thread between all the shows, and with my interest in Hong, is an element of chance and potential. Huppert and Hong collaborating at the Cannes Film Festival mirrors King's Leap staging a show at N/A during Frieze Seoul. I am not unlike Claire, nor am I unlike Huppert (as much as I would hope to act as well as her). I am a traveler here in Seoul, but I am also here to perform a role. My role, now externalized at N/A, allows me to dissect King’s Leap in the third person.

If I am not Claire, perhaps I am the camera.