About

《Who Will Go Before Us》 Since ancient times, humanity has needed something to go ahead of it and show the way: gods and heroes, nations and ideologies, science and technology, and today, capital and images. We have believed in and followed these things while imagining the future. At times, when no one seemed to be leading the way, we created something ourselves and hoped it would guide us. "Who will go before us?" This question no longer belongs to religion alone. What should we believe, and what should we follow? In moments when no one knows what is right, people take the choices of others as their standard. What many people look at, what many people want, and where many people are heading eventually becomes a standard in itself. In Ban Min-su's 'Art Auction' series, the auction house is not simply a place where artworks are traded. The crowd in each painting gazes at a single work, yet what they see is not the work alone. They also see the value assigned to an image, the desire surrounding it, and the world that value creates. The auction house is where such belief takes shape. When people give meaning and value to an image and those who want it gather together, the image becomes more than an object; it becomes a standard. Perhaps humanity never left the age of gods behind. Perhaps, in every era, it has created new objects to believe in, endlessly making new 'gods.' 《Who Will Go Before Us》 follows the gaze of this crowd. We look ahead, waiting for someone to step forward first, but what lies before us is, in the end, the images, values and desires we ourselves have created. Who will go before us? And what will we believe as we follow behind? Through the space of the auction house and the gaze of the people gathered there, Ban Min-su's work returns this question to us, inviting us to see what we are following and what made us believe in it.