Myungchan Kim, Dahoon Nam, Ahyeon Ryu, Min Shin, Hán Yohan, Tactics for an Era, at K&L Museum, Seoul

Myungchan Kim, Dahoon Nam, Ahyeon Ryu, Min Shin, Hán Yohan, Tactics for an Era, at K&L Museum, Seoul

What strategies are left to those who inhabit an era that already feels occupied, saturated, coded into its own machinery?
How can we remain present, active, tactical, not just witnesses, in a time seemingly designed by others, for others?

We walked through Tactics for an Era with these questions hanging in the air like fog, finding in each work not an answer, but a gesture, a personal inflection that inserts itself into the cracks of the given world, to reframe it, rewrite it, perhaps even slow it down.

At the entrance, an unspoken declaration meets us: we are not neutral observers, and neither are the artists. The five participants, Myungchan Kim, Dahoon Nam, Ahyeon Ryu, Min Shin, Hán Yohan, operate within reality not as passive viewers but as thinking bodies. They act according to the logic of “tactics” as Michel de Certeau defines them in The Practice of Everyday Life, small, inventive maneuvers carried out within someone else’s space, acts of survival that become acts of resistance, micro-revolutions that ask no permission.

The K&L Museum presents their works in a display that is clear, but far from neutral, an environment designed to engage the senses more than invite silent contemplation. The lighting is soft and unobtrusive, and the layout unfolds like an open-ended essay, each room seems to respond to the last, never quite concluding the dialogue.

Myungchan Kim’s practice holds us in place, the airbrush, a tool of industrial precision, becomes paradoxically a medium for human warmth. But this isn’t a nostalgic return to the hand, rather, a contamination. On smooth surfaces, we find tremors, imperfections, hesitation. It’s painting that resists not by confronting the machine, but by seeping into its malfunctions.

Ahyeon Ryu constructs mechanical objects that ask us to move, touch, participate. Her sculptures don’t work alone, they require our bodies. And once the body is called into action, it becomes aware. Every motion, every exertion recalls the kind of human labor that can’t be quantified in productivity. Here, matter becomes thought.

Hán Yohan moves in a more ethereal, yet no less grounded, direction. His sounds, gestures, bodily vibrations seek a primitive form of communication, something pre-linguistic, pre-digital. A language without codes, only resonance. And for this very reason, it speaks to us deeply.

With Min Shin, we encounter visual structures that seem subdued but are charged with political tension. Her sculptures, often made from everyday materials, act as machines of collective empathy. They give form to the anger of precarious bodies, the voids left by invisible labor, the slow sedimentation of frustration. This is not an explosive rage, but a simmering one, impossible to ignore.

Dahoon Nam brings the circle to a close with biting irony, turning our attention to the spectacle of the art market. His performances and sculptures play with the codes of reputation and value, but they do so through laughter, laughter that unsettles. In that levity, something cuts deep. It’s a strategic kind of comedy, precise, and sharp. Another form of tactic.

Tactics for an Era is not an exhibition about how to be in the world, but about how to move within it. Each artist proposes a different gait, a distinct rhythm, a specific posture. There is no heroism here, but resolve. No optimism, but clarity.

And as we leave the K&L Museum, we carry with us the sense that action is still possible,
modest, lateral, necessary.