51.5072° N, 0.1275° W
37.5665° N, 126.9780° W
Turning the corner of a dark hallway, the viewer encounters canvases laid out like slackened bodies. Deliberately displaced from standardized formats and conventional modes of viewing, this arrangement - evoking a body in an unconscious state - is a scenographic strategy the artist adopts to present the work. Rather than facing the paintings head-on, the viewer must tilt their body, turn their head, and continually recalibrate their own coordinates within the space. This unfamiliar configuration serves as a portrait of a being lingering at the margins, never fully assimilated into the dominant order.
The title invokes Bacchus(Dionysus), the god of wine and festivity; yet what matters here is not the imagery of indulgence, but a state of metamorphosis and regeneration. Just as grapes are crushed and fermented into an entirely different substance, Bacchus symbolizes a transitional being who reaches a new dimension through dissolution. Likewise, in this work, form and space are never fixed, constantly shifting into other states. The dismantled surfaces draw the viewer’s gaze downward through a horizontal descent rather than a vertical order, pulling them into a narrow, lowered zone - a quiet, nest-like interior of sensation.
In this intermediate territory - belonging neither to god nor human, inside nor outside, order nor disintegration - the world is momentarily perceived in a new light. Space, no longer a mere objective backdrop, is reassembled as a tranquil and intimate sanctuary shared by the artist and the viewer.
Hongil Yoon regards space not as a simple background, but as an organic site onto which the human interior is projected. Departing from static order, he reconstructs the narratives of beings that remain on the threshold. By disorienting familiar spatial sensibilities, he records the condensed sensory tension that gathers within these interstices.
2025
Oil on canvas, video
144x292cm