GROUP EXHIBITION

The exhibition departs from the Buddhist concept of ‘Yeo (如)’ and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s notion of ‘Delicate Empiricism (Zarte Empirie)’. Both modes of thought resist interpretation or judgment, instead respecting things as they are and allowing phenomena to reveal themselves. This shared attitude expands into an aesthetic position that seeks to encounter the world through direct experience rather than explanation.

The White Porcelain Knee-shaped Water Dropper from Joseon Dynasty functions as the archetypal point of departure for this aesthetic. Formed solely through the interaction of clay, glaze, and fire, the vessel reveals whiteness not as color but as the result of material process, extending sensory depth through restraint and limitation. The aesthetic structure formed through repetition and emptiness reveals a genealogical continuum between Western Minimalism and Korean Dansaekhwa at the intersection of materiality and spirit. Beyond a simple utilitarian object, the water dropper is presented as a primordial prototype of contemporary aesthetics.

Objects do not explain their meaning; they simply exist, and the viewer encounters them through experience rather than interpretation. In this sense, Dansaekhwa and Minimalism share not merely formal affinities but a common epistemological stance toward the world. As an aesthetic attitude that removes excessive and artificial expression, ‘Yeo (如)’ allows being to reveal itself. It proposes the possibility that art may be restored as an experience of presence. At the point where Eastern and Western philosophy converge with contemporary art, the exhibition offers a renewed sensorial encounter with existence.