Brief Encounter simultaneously explores the notions of moment and continuity. This contrast in temporal perception generates different senses of time within moments of contact—whether between events, emotions, bodies or objects. As the exhibition title suggests, a brief encounter is, by its very nature, momentary. Yet, if such an encounter involves an exchange—physical, emotional or otherwise— it may extend beyond its short duration, lingering like an afterimage. A passing touch, a subtle tremor, an inexplicable excitement or shame, a faint stimulus—all may give rise to an event. Contact understood as a form of friction, registers emotions that might otherwise evade conscious perception. At times, a brief encounter may surpass the accumulated time of sustained relationships or daily routines, leaving behind an intense impression, a lingering sensation, or a profound resonance.

This exhibition presents the works of Yebin Kang, Elinor Haynes, Youngho Jeong and Sungju Ham. Each artist, working across different mediums, captures fragments of the contemporary, forming temporary networks of relations that, in turn, spark unanticipated narratives. Throughout the exhibition, countless brief encounters evoke—among artworks, people, objects and bodies, and even between intangible forces or atmospheres that collide and interact in accidental and extraordinary ways. Brief Encounter serves as a metaphor for a certain moment, however, an eternal encounter is mediated by the exhibition that is ultimately placed in infinite temporality. It seeks to explore the ephemeral nature of contact, the persistence of fleeting moments, and the potential for wonder.

Yebin Kang investigates the relational dynamics between objects and images through painting. She actively reverses the cause-and-effect relationship between the two, sometimes conjuring an image to evoke an object Furthermore, conversely, she makes it invoking an object to materialise an image. When these object-image pairings are consolidated into a painting, they form an event—a scene that gestures toward a latent narrative. The four works presented in this exhibition depict objects rendered into images, stripped of fixed contexts, operating as open-ended triggers for imagination. Each composition, framed within the boundaries of the canvas, becomes a suggestive fragment, hinting at an unfolding story.

Youngho Jeong explores the interplay between technological mediation and human perception through photography. His practice involves re-photographing images mediated through digital screens—ranging from foreign news reports to AI-generated and post-truth imagery—thereby collapsing multiple layers of representation. The four works in this exhibition depict spectral faces observed through networked images, alongside AI-generated bodies marked by digital aberrations. These fragmented photographs evoke an ambiguous tension—balancing between an uncanny familiarity and an estranged beauty, between what appears natural yet remains fundamentally unnatural.

Sungju Ham transfers randomly sourced internet images onto canvas, repeatedly painting them as if turning digital ephemera into real-world allegories. The process introduces errors, distortions, and subjective reinterpretations, selectively preserving or omitting layers of meaning inherent to the original. A moment when the hour and minute hands aligned overlap, a body shifting its weight with one leg crossed, a cat's playful scrawl etched onto a car bonnet—these momentary and fragmented images incite an uneasy imagination, stirring something subtly disquieting.

Elinor Haynes's practice examines subtle nuances that arise through contact and encounter. Working across diverse mediums, she incorporates fragile materials such as glass and ceramics alongside substances associated with the body—breast milk, saliva, keratin and strands of hair—creating sculptural works that resist fixed definition. The organic, mutable nature of those materials underscores an ambiguity that evades precise classification. For this exhibition, Haynes presents a new 3D animation, raising the intimate frictions and micro-movements of the body. In this way, her work amplifies the sensorial quality of touch, translating it into a visual and visceral experience.

_Co-crated by

Jieon Lee, Sangyeop Rhii, Seunga You