Nietzsche in a Downtown Supply Store
Installation view of Interface of the Abyss. Courtesy of the artists and Below Grand, New York.
Hanging from a glittering sun-catcher-meat-hook, two books slowly revolve around each other: Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and Alexander Galloway’s The Interface Effect. These two texts inspired Frank WANG Yefeng’s group exhibition Interface of the Abyss, which is open now through October 5th, 2024 at Below Grand. For this exhibition, Wang has brought together six artists—aaajiao, Chando Ao, Hyunseon Kang, Kelvin Kyung Kun Park, Mark Dorf, and Yi Xin Tong—all of whom tangle philosophical concepts into their physical work.
Below Grand Gallery shares a storefront with a wholesale supply store, which creates an unusual atmosphere. The inside room is tucked between rows of overflowing ceramic cups and plates, and it feels like a surreal alcove in a hoarder’s den. The combination playfully rocks the expectations of a white cube gallery. Before even engaging with the work, the space primes the viewer for an out-of-the-ordinary show.
Mark Dorf. View VII, View IV, and View XII (2021). Archival Dye sublimation print. Courtesy of the artist and Below Grand Gallery.
Despite drawing from two dense texts, Wang did not wish to make the show impenetrable. When I asked what “the abyss” meant to him, Wang responded that it was many things: The space is an abyss, each piece is an abyss, and they’re about the abyss. It’s less of a concrete answer and more of a starting point. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil reads: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” In other words, it is impossible to confront something without becoming entangled in it. When you behold something, it becomes a part of you in return.
This idea immediately clicks into conversation with Kelvin Kyung Kun Park’s video piece, titled When Tigers Used to Smoke, which was conceived in the midst of pandemic quarantine. Shining bright and large from the front window, the six-minute video shows a tiger walking back and forth across the screen, as color-graded static floats across the lower part of the frame. Refracted color bands synchronize with the tiger’s stripes, while the camera zooms slowly closer. The climactic moment occurs when the tiger raises its head to make eye contact with the viewer. All at once, the tiger’s gaze reflects its captivity, the role of the viewer as captor, and a certain connection between the quarantine and being trapped in a cage. The title, When Tigers Used to Smoke, is an expression used in many Korean folktales to introduce a story (similar to the English “once upon a time”). The invocation of fairy tales brings up a sense of wonder and mystery, fostering a deep curiosity that’s critical in understanding the allure of an abyss.
Hyunseon Kang. A Sleeping Monument (2020). Interactive 3D object (WebGL). Infinite duration. Courtesy of the artist and Below Grand, New York.
Alexander Galloway’s text, on the other hand, seeks to define the term “interface” and argues that an interface is a multiplicity of processes which mediate (to quote the exhibition’s press release) “what we perceive and how we act.” An interface, for Galloway, reveals a world and prompts an interaction. A Sleeping Monument by Hyunseon Kang addresses this idea most literally. Kang’s work is an interactive 3D object: the image of a woman laying down asleep. Presented on a tablet, the subject can be moved and spun around by the viewer. Our investment in Kang’s world briefly erases our own, as we try to understand how much we can access her universe. Again, elements of mystery and curiosity pull the viewer into the work, furthered by the piece’s interactive quality.
Although Park’s video and Kang’s simulation draw literal connections between the texts and the show, I was most compelled by the larger concept of looking at art through this language of “interface” and “abyss.” In many ways, the magic of art is its ability to transport us, to make us feel that we’ve found a brief home in another world. So often, when confronting a painting, it feels like the artist is paces away, looking back at us. The most impactful works of art (for me, at least) are the ones that make us feel understood, perceived, and looked at in return.
Chando Ao. Untitled (2024). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Below Grand, New York.
I found this feeling most clearly in Chando Ao’s large painting, which depicts a murky and nightmarish scene. Stretching across the back wall of the indoor gallery, Ao’s painting is hectic and alive, with splashes of black paint building out a deep windowless cavern. Wang told me that Ao was working on the painting late at night when a sound from outside startled him. Creeping to the door, Ao felt he could just make out the outline of a person. This figure—a ghoul, an intruder, or a fantasy—became a character in the painting. Gazing into Ao’s painting, the viewer is a part of this late-night scare, frightened by the same mysteries, caught in the painting’s abyss.
Interface of the Abyss is on view at Below Grand, New York, from August 31st to October 5th, 2024.
