In Phantom Rooms, the elusive nature of material and immaterial possessions is laid bare, offering a profound examination of the ways in which objects and spaces imprint themselves upon us. The exhibition brings together the works of Yoo Geun-Taek, Xi’an Kim, Kyungmi Shin, and Lily Wong, whose artistic practices engage with notions of lineage, colonization, and the intimate connections between cultural memory and material culture. Drawing from the tradition of Chaekgeori—Korean still-life paintings of books and objects—the artists reinterpret these age-old contemplations, exploring both the scholarly and the mundane. The works become vessels for memories, desires, and histories, sparking dialogue between possession and identity.

The exhibition’s title, Phantom Rooms, gestures toward the liminality of these spaces—physical and psychological, real and imagined. Echoing the still-life tradition, deeply rooted in Belgium’s art history, especially in Antwerp, the works in this exhibition push beyond conventional boundaries. The familiar conventions of perspective, arrangement, and trompe l’oeil, prized in both Flemish and Korean traditions, are reinterpreted here. The objects and spaces represented exist in a state of flux, neither fully present nor entirely absent, embodying a realm where memory, possession, and identity continuously intermingle and shift.

In this way, Phantom Rooms evokes spatial and temporal ambiguity, where the boundaries between interior and exterior, object and subject, and personal and collective blur. The still-life genre becomes a framework for navigating what is seen and unseen, the known and the unknowable. The viewer is drawn into these phantom rooms, where the physicality of objects gives way to reflections on the voids left behind—spaces where the passage of time, cultural memory, and identity converge and crystallize.

Artists: Yoo Geun-Taek, Lily Wong, Kyungmi Shin, Xian Kim