Leeum Museum of Art presents Ritual of Matter, a work by Boma Pak (b. 1988), as a part of an ongoing project to rediscover the spaces within the museum and to highlight the works of emerging Korean artists. Spanning drawings, objects, spontaneous gestures, and scent, among others, and operating through multiple artistic identities, Boma Pak navigates and advocates for vulnerability of material, as well as marginalized and/or feminine beings. Transformed into a reception area of a fictitious company, ROOM - the lobby’s lounge - becomes a temporary stage for synesthetic experience.

Pak’s company, Sophie Etulips Xylang Co., is nothing more than reflections of light and fleeting impressions. Here, elements of grandeur, such as large glass facades and marble, frequently used in skyscrapers of large corporations, are replaced with light and frivolous materials like plastic sheets and acrylic. Portraits of the executives are mere silhouettes, unnamed and faceless against a sporadic array of objects that mourn the identities, or the lack thereof, of beings swept away into the abyss of oblivion. Faint vibration across the wall, a fading scent, and ambiguous sounds present vulnerable matter as the main characters of this fictional setting instead. This ritual of matter centered on a corporation with a twist accentuates the potential of material beings that are conventionally considered futile in a market-driven world.

The work sits in an intermediary space where the museum’s visitors stay only momentarily before heading to their respective destinations. The material presence Pak brings to the in-between stage is destined to disappear in due time as it lacks the rights to stay or be preserved. The ritual dedicated to such ephemerality undermines the value system that strictly separates the real from the fake, and encourages institutional consciousness by challenging the ocularcentrism and devotion to permanence that lies underneath their usual practice. To spend time here, albeit for a little while, implicates one to the celebration of images and impressions - easily consumed, forgotten, and discarded.

The performance Opera: Sky Blue Infinitus Canon takes place during opening week, celebrating the presence of “matter” and extending the ritual into the museum’s lobby. The performance saturates the lobby with the passion mediated by the performers, sounds that mourn repressed beings, and the presence of the museum caretakers, turning the space into a stage where the perpetual and ephemeral switch places, interweave, and reconcile.