For a brief moment, I mistook him for Juhan-hyung.
The closely cropped hair that looked like it would feel bristly to the touch, the sharp impression he gave off due to his extremely thin frame, his towering height and long limbs. And to top it all off, the head-to-toe black.
“Oh my god. What is happening? That’s R.R.!”
As if she knew the identity of the man who reminded me of Juhan-hyung, Noona hastily pulled her cocktail glass from her lips and jabbed me repeatedly in the side. In contrast to my excited Noona, he simply stared blankly at the man walking toward us, his eyes still devoid of any agitation.
“Jane, Connor! Thank you for the invitation.”
The man, who approached the couple with a wide smile, must have met with them recently, as they exchanged simple and friendly greetings.
Up close, his features were far less mischievous than Juhan-hyung’s. He exuded such a calm and mature air that it felt strange I had even thought they looked alike. He also seemed to be three or four years older than Juhan-hyung. And above all else, he was a foreigner.
“Now, this is the leader of the organization I sponsor, Reed Rogers. And this is Liu Weikun, who runs a gallery in Seoul.”
He nodded first and offered a handshake, and the man replied as he accepted it.
“I actually went to the VIP opening today. I enjoyed the exhibition.”
“You did?”
Jane furrowed her brow and placed a light hand on R.R.’s—that is, Reed Rogers’s—shoulder.
“I wasn’t invited, but another gallery staff member I know asked if I was interested, saying they had a spare plus-one spot. They knew I was just lazing around in Chicago right now.”
Even while listening to the story, he looked uninterested in the man. Or perhaps his mind was elsewhere.
“If it’s an organization that Jane and Connor sponsor, what kind of…?”
He did ask the question, but it seemed like a minimum courtesy, considering the couple had made a point of introducing the man. It was also surprising that he asked a different question instead of asking for the man’s thoughts on Shushu’s work, especially since he’d said he was at the VIP opening today.
“It’s a foundation that supports a community of artists. To be precise, it’s an organization that supports the livelihood and creative activities of emerging artists in difficult economic and environmental situations, and I’m in charge of the overall operations.”
“Hmm.”
Despite his uninspired reaction, the man continued his answer diligently.
“It’s not like we’re all pursuing a common goal together, and it’s a very individualistic group… but since people with similar inclinations have gathered, I feel like we’re just calling it a community for now.”
Strangely, the more I heard the man’s explanation, the more ambiguous the image of the organization became, but he didn’t bother asking any further questions. Jane smiled and patted the man’s shoulder.
“Reed himself was originally a painter. He even won a special award at the Venice Biennale at a very young age.”
“Yes, though that award is what completely ruined my relationship with painting.”
The man’s expression and tone seemed to resent his award-winning past.
“I don’t paint anymore. I got fed up with the system where galleries cleverly use management to create stars, suck them dry, and then abandon them when the bubble seems about to burst. I was also one of those flashy, over-hyped stars born from that system, rather than someone who actually had that much talent.”
The content of his words was quite scathing, but his tone was not. Thanks to what he had told me little by little about how a part of the so-called ‘global art market’ worked, and how competition was impossible without promotion and management, I could understand the man’s words to some extent.
“That’s also why I ended up helping novice artists at my current organization. Right now, I’m just focusing on running the foundation while writing novels.”
“The short story collection you published early this year was impressive.”
At my Noona’s excited voice, everyone’s gaze turned to her.
The man wrinkled his smoothly exposed forehead and, with a smile, pointed back and forth between my Noona and himself.
“You’re Yuni, right? We follow each other.”
It wasn’t a one-sided acquaintance on my Noona’s part. The man seemed as pleased as if he’d met an old friend and offered her a handshake. In an instant, the flow of conversation shifted to the two of them.
Someone began to play the grand piano that sat under the glass ceiling, in front of the large folding doors leading to the backyard, and people’s gazes and attention focused there.
“I enjoyed your real-time posts about the exhibition today, too. Did you direct the exhibition, Yuni?”
“No. This gallery hosted this exhibition, I was just in charge of our side of things.”
“The party is on a grand scale.”
“This gallery is the host, but for some reason, our CEO decided to put in a lot of effort this time.”
While the adults next to us, centered around Jane, Connor, and him, listened to and applauded the jazz piano performance, the man named Reed Rogers and Noona continued their conversation.
Noona, apologizing for the late introduction, had the man and me greet each other. The man seemed to have difficulty with the pronunciation of ‘Yeehyeon’ but also found it amusing. He said that while the name Yuni was convenient and pretty for international use, the resistance felt in the vocal organs when pronouncing the name Yeehyeon gave it an exotic feel, which earned him a light-hearted complaint from Noona.
“My name is the absolute worst. Anyone from any language can pronounce it without difficulty, but that just makes it completely unmemorable, you know?”
The man made a dissatisfied face, wrinkling his forehead. That characteristic expression, which created three or four distinct lines, seemed to be a habit of his. But they weren’t wrinkles that made him look old.
When my Noona suggested the three of us sit at the bar and talk at a more leisurely pace, the man readily accepted. All the other attendees were engrossed in the jazz arrangement of a famous Michael Jackson hit. I didn’t know much about it, but the performance didn’t seem amateurish.
Before leaving, I tapped his shoulder with my index finger as he stood right beside me, half-turned and in conversation.
When I told him I would be at the bar with my Noona, he smiled and touched my cheek. He didn’t seem conscious of it at all, but just by being near him and talking intimately with him, people showed a subtle curiosity, or even overt hostility, and unlike him, I wasn’t used to being the center of attention. Pretending not to notice, I smiled awkwardly, burdened by the several pairs of eyes glancing our way, and gently took his hand to pull it down before slipping away.
On one side of the hall, against a backdrop of boldly printed wallpaper, was a large S-shaped bar where two formally dressed bartenders were making cocktails or serving drinks according to the guests’ requests.
As we sat down side-by-side in the concave curve of the S, the man proposed a toast and asked us to call him Reed.
Reed said he had seen my painting in the first-floor exhibition hall that afternoon, and he leaned his upper body over the bar to study my face. His thin eyebrows, which looked deliberately shaved with a razor or something similar, twitched. Come to think of it, Reed didn’t have a single piercing.
“To be honest, the work didn’t exude a master’s skill or the profound weight of time… but because of things like the boldness of leaving empty space and omitting the background, or the individuality and color sense that properly expressed the transience and loneliness of a sunset with cool blue tones, I never thought it would be the work of someone so young.”
Reed, sitting apart from me with my Noona in between, leaned his upper body far back for a moment, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head.
“No. In a way, maybe it’s just as I expected. The works were, how should I put it… On one hand, they had a tender nostalgia, like an old man in the twilight of his life looking back on his past, yet on the other hand, they also felt like the sensitive pain of a boy painfully passing through the middle of his formative years.”
“Ah… um…”
Since he had given me a specific and passionate critique of my painting, I felt I should give some kind of feedback, but I wasn’t sure if agreeing that he was right or simply thanking him was the appropriate response. As I fidgeted with the thin stem of my cocktail glass, hesitating, my Noona chuckled and stepped in for me.
“This is his first exhibition. He’s just shy about hearing impressions of his work.”
After that, the three of us talked comfortably about various topics. It felt less like socializing and more like a light chat among close friends. Unlike his sharp first impression, Reed was not a difficult person to get along with. He and my Noona, in particular, seemed like they had known each other for a very long time after only about two or three minutes.
I was laughing at Reed’s witty story about a famous museum director, who had an immense (excessive) confidence in his own artistic eye, mistaking a trash can exhibited as a work of art by a major artist for a real trash can at a biennale, when I felt a weight on both my shoulders as someone placed their hands on them and pressed down gently.
“Well, I’m glad you seem to be having fun.”
I looked up to see him smiling.
The piano performance had ended at some point, and music with a faster rhythm than when we first arrived was now flowing through the hall. The lighting had grown dimmer, like in a club, and at the same time, the music had gotten louder. People cheered, raising the energy.
“Sorry to interrupt your conversation… but there’s someone I’d really like to introduce you two to. May I borrow you for a moment?”
After asking for Reed’s understanding, he led my Noona and me to a sofa set in the innermost part of the hall. Of the four or five large and small sofa sets filling the hall, it was the smallest in scale, but the most lavishly and comfortably decorated space.
Unlike the people swaying to the music between the sofas and the round standing tables that had likely been specially prepared for today’s party, the group of five or six people gathered around there was talking calmly.
“Chloe, these are the friends I told you about. Yuni, the director of Phantom, and the artist… Yeehyeon.”
He introduced us to them, specifically to a woman in a black suit, by squeezing the hands he had on my Noonas’ and my shoulders in turn. Now it was his turn to introduce the woman to us.
“And this is…”
“I know who she is.”
Because he was standing between us, I had to lean my upper body forward a bit to see my Noona’s face. He, too, looked surprised by my Noona’s declaration that she already knew who the woman before them was.
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