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Exhibitions  >  Function–Fiction

Function–Fiction

(008)
JUNE 8–AUG 19, 2024
GOBI
1017 N Madison Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
About the Exhibition

With immense excitement and gratitude, we present Function–Fiction, a group exhibition featuring works of Korean and Los Angeles-based artists Anais Franco, jinseok choi, Jisoo Chung, Max Cleary, Ruoyi Shi, Shin Danbi, UJU, and Yoonjeong Lee. Held at GOBI’s first permanent home, this exhibition marks the beginning of a new chapter. Since its conception in 2021, GOBI has operated nomadically, creating exhibitions and experiences at Airbnbs, hotels, restaurants, and on the streets of Los Angeles. In hopes of manifesting the fundamental spirit of GOBI through this inaugural exhibition, we invited eight artists to consider the identity of GOBI as a starting point for their works.

GOBI draws its name from gobi (고비), a Korean traditional furniture from the Joseon dynasty. It is a cabinet that was hung on the wall as decoration and used to hold letters and documents. Gobi is unique in that it is the only furniture of its time that valued aesthetic and function equally. Formally, the furniture ranges dynamically from a simple box structure to complex designs created through joining of wood pieces, but regardless of its intricacy (or lack thereof), all gobi are open containers. They do not have locks or even doors, suggesting possibilities for circulation and easy access amidst daily routines, yet more importantly, the absence of closure allows for gobi to exist ambiguously, lingering between and being both decorative and functional.

In Function–Fiction, artists present their interpretations of gobi’s form, function, significance, and imagined contents, as it relates to their practices. In these works, histories and fiction intertwine, giving permission for function and non-function to alternate and coexist. Anais Franco and Jisoo Chung explore image-making and body as archives; jinseok choi and Shin Danbi consider collective histories as a means for definition; Max Cleary and UJU suggest ordinary rituals as identifiers of a person; and Ruoyi Shi and Yoonjeong Lee utilize subtle humor as a way to question systemic hierarchies. While each work addresses unique subject matters that reflect the artist’s prolonged interests, a shared quality can be observed – the embracing of ambiguity as an intentional way of being. Simultaneously documenting and abstracting, accumulating and dissipating, representing and imagining, defining and reinterpreting, the works serve to augment the ubiquitous ambiguity and prompt viewers to examine within, around, and in between their functions and fictions.