Ahram Choi: Optimistic Melancholy

Ahram Choi: Optimistic Melancholy

Installation, 2024

What does it mean to directly breathe in the air of a place and confront the atmosphere that emanates from it? How does experiencing the reality of a place through various senses differ from the indirect perception through some medium?

The description of subtle sensations that are difficult to articulate suggests that there is a diverse experience beyond the medium that can awaken the senses, drawing one into the reality of a place with time and a substantial body.

However, is it a misconception that every place and reality will offer me a diverse sensory experience? In places and realities that are excessively arid and withered, where one must summon all the senses and energy of the body to perceive, the artist seems to feel a fate that requires focusing on something more detailed and small. His gaze, now subtly feeling the sound of the wind existing in the completed and broken world, tells not a judgment about a particular subject but a quiet hope without a specific object.

As someone has already left, and being one step behind in that place, he unconditionally feels the faint wind that cannot settle anywhere. Experiencing the fading wind from the completed and broken world, he perceives it transparently.