For the second event of 22.48 m² , we welcome a Korean artist , Sang- Sobi HOMME , who tries to turn this showroom into a multi sensation space with the installation 'Synesthesia'. It consists of crushed raspberries impaled on the wall, stitched by needles as banderillas . Each of these 99 raspberry spots irresistibly captures the feeling of the viewer as a target. The artist allows us to take part in the transformation of this space with a twist of all the senses , through its delicious / painful device, which awakens in our memory a disturbing ambivalence.

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During the first days of the realization of his project, Sang-Sobi HOMME first wanted to find the primitive state of 22,48 m². Dismantling the wall that hid the two doors and that were used to hang up frames, sanding it and repainting it with care and an almost religious attention, as to erase the memory of the previous event.

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So, the impression is that this deletion leads to a pure unveiling of the space itself, brought back to its origin. This act of preparation, almost usual, oddly seemed sacred, like a priest preparing the place for a ceremony.

 

Finally, in a "primitivised" 22.48 m², the artist has established three settlements: first, a kind of band made of 97 small raspberries crashes, then another one by the size of an egg, and finally a third area, the toilets. With the intention to use the space both intensively and extensively, playing on physical and sensations.

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In the first zone , the artist has horizontally projected his raspberries on the wall, at a judicious height making it difficult to position the look facing the needle tip. 97 " clots " of raspberry are fixed by a needle inserted upside down. From each a juice flows like a stream of blood that would show the cruel and sensual contact, hatched by the artist by the sharp tip with velvety skin, delicate and delicious. The power of the image evoked is such that one can almost hear the roar of pain of this small being. We can also see blood spit from a long agony, coagulated into a sort of recording of the end of a terrible disappeared body. Or, slightly more , a parade of flowers chanting, the emergence of a procession of buttons, singing a song of praise,  after having been engraved on the wall.

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Facing this scene, in the middle of the wall facing him, the artist hung the mass of bloody raspberries flesh as impaled by a huge needle, the viewer must look by looking up. But to do so , his body has to work , walking back taking care to the other points, darting behind him. To satisfy the curiosity of the gaze is not easy . The sticky juice runs down the wall and the cabinet to the floor, dividing the walls  in two. This location , in the center and in height, creates in the viewer the feeling of being dominated . Finally, stuck between these two installations that repel and attract both fascinating him painfully , the viewer's body , as pierced by the needle , freezes, while his heart turns into ice.

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When we look at the space from outside the gallery, through the window, the whole scene evokes strange feelings . The color of the small sacrificial victims becomes almost purple over time , and while their little bodies fade , oblivion comes . It will not be easy to guess what has been the nature of cult that required such offering. Something remains, pale forever, as these monstrous embryos preserved in a bottle of formaldehyde. This is the violence that single vision generates a smell in us, and a feeling of being pierced to the heart, butterfly of an entomologist collection. Frozen, the viewer finds himself paralyzed and eventually become this inform thing  prisoner of the formalin of 22,48 m².

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Raspberry, delicious bite once , becomes this disturbing temptress who invites you today to taste at your own risk , the sacred in its own way, by Sang-Sobi HOMME. ( Lee Bo - kyoung )

 

 

Born in Seoul, South Korea in 1968 , Sobi-Sang HOMME lives and works in Paris . Currently a PhD student in Arts and Sciences at the University Paris 1 Panthéon -Sorbonne , he has conducted research around wood carving at the National University of Fine Arts in Tokyo.

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