“I don’t really know... about artists.”
“From what I can see, you only stop in front of older artists’ works. At least artists who were very active in the 1990s. This one is comparatively recent, though.”
“Is that so.”
I turned my head back to the piece.
The woman in the painting looked like she was in a painful situation, but strangely what reached me wasn’t despair or lethargy or being eaten away; it was a life-force like a pounding heart. Yet it wasn’t some romantic optimism like hope or dreams. It was closer to a warning—that even if someone harmed her, even if it killed her, they could never rule her mind. What I felt there was instead a kind of manic struggle. A humanity of hot blood and living flesh that never gave up being itself even at the limit.
I couldn’t know what intention the artist really had, or what pulled them to make the piece, but what I received through it in this moment was that.
The more I looked, the more it pulled at me. If I could, I wanted to lay my hand on the crust of dried paint and vaguely feel the artist’s breath and energy.
“For a work to be judged purely on its artistic value, apart from marketing or a gallery’s power—these days, even ten years isn’t enough. All the pieces you’re taking interest in now are ones whose prices are still rising even now, anywhere from a hundred years to at least twenty years on.”
Feeling his gaze, I looked at him. He was looking at me with the eyes of someone studying something interesting. His eyes shone looking at me. They glittered like sunlight breaking into spray on waves. It was undeniably beautiful.
“And you prefer fairly wild works. Your usual personality doesn’t seem that way. Or... maybe that’s not quite true?”
His low voice, talking about my personality, was drawing something private inside right now. With arms folded, rubbing his chin, he looked at me from beneath lowered lids, as if pressing down, and in an instant the color of the air between us changed.
I didn’t know how to respond to that last line—whether he was asking me to answer or just talking to himself.
But his observation that I seemed to prefer wild works might not have been wrong. Whatever they were, I liked works that showed themselves as they were. I always had.
The reason was simple. Just... because the language they used resembled mine. Because it was a language I could understand.
Since we lingered in front of the painting, a staffer from the gallery approached and asked if we wanted more detailed information. With a smiling face he politely declined, and we moved on.
Matching my tempo as always, he was the one who stopped first in front of a booth from a New York gallery. More precisely, before a work displayed near the entrance.
His gaze kept its usual detached calm, but part of it was different. Less objective coolness than a chill cynicism.
“How about this one?”
As he asked and looked back at me, he quickly shifted his expression into a playful smile. Tapping at the air as if knocking, he indicated the piece, tilted his head a touch, and looked at me. The cheerful tone seemed, inversely, to reveal a twist in his mood.
I studied the painting again, calmly.
The canvas looked about four meters by four meters. On a blood-red ground, complex curves in various colors tangled together—an abstract. But no matter how hard I tried to focus, instead of consistent energy or emotion, all I could faintly register were a sense of color and atmosphere.
Despite using intense colors and deploying big curves in quantities that could be interesting enough, somehow it didn’t feel bold.
Because it wasn’t trying to show anything.
It was nothing like what I felt in Inwoo’s paintings—the frank revealing of one’s own lack of frankness. Here, it tried to hide that lack of frankness and, on top of that, used multiple tricks and devices to fabricate a false self and present it as the real thing.
I checked the caption, thinking it might offer a hint for viewing. The title was Lovers on a Bed. Normally, that’s the sort of title you’d put on a portrait or a realist work, not an abstract. I looked again. It felt like holding a map but being wrapped in fog with no path in sight. Like a quiz where even with the hint the answer wouldn’t come.
“I... don’t really know.”
“......”
The way he looked at me, wanting a more specific explanation, was like a teacher hoping a beloved student would produce a brilliant answer to a foolish question and astonish the world. I couldn’t tell which direction he wanted, so I could only be honest.
“I can see technique—color sense, composition—but... nothing is surfacing that connects into a message or a feeling. I’m not good at explaining this, but... you can’t really know someone if all you’ve exchanged are greetings, courtesies, or business talk. It feels... like that.”
“You can be more honest.”
He was sure I was hiding a harsher impression of this painting. He was urging me to pour it out to the bottom, with no politeness. Looking at him, his eyes bright and even a smile on his lips, I hesitated and then spoke.
“It has form but no substance... like having a gorgeous set of dishes and a fancy table setting but no actual food to taste and savor. That’s how it feels to me.”
I didn’t want to talk about another person’s work in that way—even if it was purely my own feeling, as someone who’d never properly studied painting, and even if the artist wasn’t somewhere hearing it.
Whether a work revealed the self frankly or not, in any case it was a piece separated from an individual, and if it wasn’t going to be praise, I didn’t want to put it into words.
But contrary to my mood, he turned fully away from the painting with a very satisfied face and faced me. His movement was even jaunty. A smile looked ready to overflow at the corners of his mouth. It was the richest smile he’d shown because of me, not because of someone else.
What could be making him that pleased.
“This is why I end up thinking of you like a fortune-teller, Mr. Seo. ‘What do you see in this painting; what do you see in that one.’”
Then he bent a little to bring his eyes level with mine.
“But that fortune-teller—really is good.”
He was still smiling, but for an instant something chillingly cold came off him. The blue in his eyes intensified, and it was like frost flowers shattered there. That chill wasn’t aimed at me, but even so, the nape of my neck prickled.
Saying I was “good” meant, in other words, that he completely agreed with my impression of the painting. He was sending a very cold cynicism at that painting—at Lovers on a Bed.
“Are you interested in the work? May I help you?”
We both turned our heads toward the voice. A medium-height middle-aged white man with a belly and a slightly receding hairline spoke with a gentle smile.
People were generally kind to him. His beautiful looks were part of it, of course, but anyone gets friendly with a “customer” who looks like they have the means to buy on the spot whatever it is you’re selling if they like it.
“I’m confidently recommending this one because he’s an artist I personally cast. One of the young artists causing a stir lately in the New York art scene. If you’re Mr. Lau, I imagine you’ve heard his name. He’s getting attention for sensual color and a boldly confident touch. He’s a Korean artist in his twenties, and with the global trend of East-Asian artists surging lately, he’s a high-investment-value artist. I think his style would suit you very well, Mr. Lau. There are two more works by the same artist besides this one—would you like to take a look?”
At first glance the white man’s face looked soft and genial, but up close the shine in his eyes wasn’t ordinary. Despite the relaxed expression, his words came in a nonstop stream that gave us—no, him—no opening. With the English I’d learned through high school, even keeping up with what he said was a struggle.
At the “personally cast” line I checked the ID card hanging on his neck; before a plain name like you’d hear in English-language dramas or films was the title “Director.” He wasn’t just a staffer; he was management-level at the gallery.
“Sensual and confident...”
Twisting his body at an angle to face the painting again halfway, he echoed the man’s phrase, as if tasting it. With arms folded, he tapped his cheek with the rolled end of the pamphlet. Then he turned only his face back to me.
“Do that painting and I go together?”
He asked it in Korean. He was smiling, but he didn’t hide the impression that he felt quite insulted by what he’d just been told.
I answered with a shake of my head.
Smiling, he set his hand on my shoulder. The hand that kneaded once, firmly, moved up to my head, lightly tousled my hair, and withdrew.
“......”
It was /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ contact I hadn’t anticipated at all. He and Juhan and Yuni traded that kind of casual touch often, but it had never spilled over to me before.
Even if only once, we had been each other’s “lovers on a bed,” but this sort of touch arising in the flow of everyday life felt more awkward to us than that sudden accident of a night together. Until now.
My face flushed as if he’d just smothered me in fierce kisses in the middle of the venue. While he turned his torso toward the director, I lifted an arm and rubbed my face as if to wipe sweat. But the AC was running strong enough that it felt a little chilly.
Shaking his head slowly as if confronting something dubious, he cast his gaze back at the painting.
“Hmm... I’m in the same line of work, you see. Talking up and packaging a work beyond what it is—that’s a sales technique I use to the hilt too, but... if you buy something for fifteen thousand dollars that’s bound to be cut in half within a year or two, you just end up making people doubt your gallery’s eye.”
The content of what he said was almost cruel, but, to be cold about it, nothing in his tone or expression carried a sneer at the work, the artist, or the director who had “discovered” the artist. He simply delivered exactly what he felt, with “no packaging whatsoever.”
In these months, even I had come to understand his way of speaking to some extent. Especially about work, he didn’t hedge or wrap things up. Not only with me; he sometimes gave instructions to Yuni and Juhan with no consideration for their feelings.
He seemed to think that if the content of the words is the truth, delivering it wrapped is just inefficient.
Of course, if you didn’t know him well, that way of speaking was hard to take. In the ordinary world, some degree of wrapping is the same as courtesy.
The director, too, was trying to keep his cool, but his round, greasy face couldn’t help twisting.
Unfortunately, I too could only agree with the substance of his words.
Not fifteen thousand Hong Kong dollars, but U.S. dollars. Even as an amateur, there was no doubt in my mind that this painting wasn’t worth that.
The director who had approached with a kindly smile and curled around us like a tongue in a mouth left the painting without regret and didn’t even offer a simple farewell as he headed for the next booth after him. For his part, he paid no mind at all to the man’s sudden switch.
As I hurried after him out of the booth, I looked back once more.
Without meaning to, I’d blasted a stranger’s work—but if I were to pick up a brush now, I felt like I’d paint something like that. A picture that couldn’t naturally show the self and dressed itself up in negating itself.
I was afraid. But I didn’t say that to him.
The sediment Lovers on a Bed left in me wasn’t only that.
Was it a coincidence that of all works, he asked my impression in front of that one. The bluish cold that had burned in his eyes bothered me. Lovers on a Bed. Unless I saw wrong, the artist’s name on the label was “SEONEW.” Seo New. A Korean artist in his twenties. So I wouldn’t forget, I mouthed the name in my mind, savoring it.
■ ■ ■
“Mr. Lau.”
Just as we were about to step into the next booth after crossing a hall where an experimental installation showed the flow of air with suspended translucent forms, someone called his name in a very bright tone.
An East-Asian man with a sharp, capable look, shorter than him by a head and a half. He immediately returned the greeting with a business smile and a handshake.
“Someone I worked with in Hong Kong back in the day. I’ll just go say hello for a minute—stay in this booth and look around. There should be quite a few pieces you’ll be interested in.”
He emphasized once more not to move elsewhere but to stay in this booth, then disappeared around the corner with his former colleague. Dressed to perfection in a tuxedo suit that fit his glossy, well-built frame, the East-Asian man seemed to be taking him to a place where other people were waiting who would be glad to see him.
In any case, this was the city where he was born and raised, and the place he’d worked until moving his base to Seoul, so it was no surprise to run into acquaintances anywhere.
I hesitated to step into the booth and look at the works on my own without him, but a staffer inside gave me a slight smile as if to say I was welcome to browse comfortably, and that gave me the courage.
Whether because it was a big gallery, the booth was quite large, and there were plenty of visitors. Thanks to that, the staff had no bandwidth to fuss over me, which was for the best.
I hadn’t even gotten through a few pieces before I could see exactly why he’d said there would be works I’d be interested in.
Fiercely or palely, bluntly or coolly—only the modes of expression differed; the place was full of works speaking in a language I could understand.
“Already sold for thirty-five million dollars—too bad, right? If you’d been a little faster, you could’ve acquired it.”
I looked to the side; an unfamiliar face. I gave an awkward smile at the man who’d addressed me in a joking tone.
“Ah... you must be staff from one of the galleries at the fair.”
“Yes.”
“Where... Seoul. Gallery... Phantom.”
