“For a work to be judged solely on its artistic merit, apart from marketing or a gallery’s power, ten years isn’t even enough these days. The pieces that you’re interested in now, Mr. Seo Yeehyeon, are all… works whose values are still rising, even after a minimum of twenty to a maximum of a hundred years.”
Feeling his gaze, I looked at him as well. He was watching me with the eyes of someone exploring an object of interest. The eyes looking at me were shining. They sparkled like waves shattering in the sunlight. Undeniably beautiful.
“And, you have a preference for rather wild works. Your usual personality doesn’t seem to be like that. No… or maybe that’s not entirely true?”
His low, drawling voice, speaking of my personality, was pulling a private sentiment into this moment. As he stood with his arms crossed, rubbing his chin, his gaze, which seemed to press down on me from beneath his lowered eyelids, changed the color of the air between us in an instant.
I didn’t know how to react to his last words, unsure if he was demanding an answer from me or just talking to himself.
But his observation that I seemed to prefer wild works might not have been wrong. Whatever it was, I liked works that revealed things as they were. I always had.
The reason was simple. It was just… because the language they used was similar to my own. Because it was a language I could understand.
As we lingered long before the painting, a gallery staff member approached and asked if we wanted more detailed information about it. He politely declined with a smile, and we started walking again.
He, who had been moving as if following my tempo, was the first to stop in front of a booth from a New York gallery. To be precise, it was in front of a piece displayed near the entrance of that booth.
His gaze still maintained its usual detachment, but something was different. It was less objective coolness and more akin to a frigid cynicism.
“What about this piece?”
Asking this, he turned to me, his expression changing in an instant to a playful smile. He tilted his head slightly and looked at me, gesturing at the work as if knocking on thin air. His exaggeratedly cheerful tone seemed, conversely, to reveal his twisted psychology.
I calmly looked at the painting once more.
The canvas, which looked to be about four meters wide and tall, was an abstract painting with a blood-red background, entangled with complex curves of various colors. But no matter how hard I tried to focus, I could only vaguely sense the color palette and atmosphere, rather than any consistent energy or emotion.
Despite using intense colors and arranging a large number of big curves that could have been sufficiently interesting, it somehow didn’t look bold.
Because it was trying to show nothing.
It was completely different from the honest exposure of one’s own dishonesty I had felt in In-woo hyung’s paintings. This was trying to hide its dishonesty, and on top of that, it was creating a fake self with various techniques and devices, trying to pass it off as real.
Hoping it might be a hint for appreciating the work, I checked the caption. The title was ‘Lovers on a Bed’. It was a title more suited for a portrait or a realist painting than an abstract one. I looked at the painting again. I felt like I was holding a map but was surrounded by fog, unable to see the path. It was like a quiz where the answer didn’t come to mind even with a hint.
“I’m not… sure.”
“……”
His gaze, demanding a more specific explanation, was like that of a teacher hoping his favorite student would surprise the world with a wise answer to a foolish question. I couldn’t tell what kind of answer he wanted, but I had no choice but to speak honestly.
“I can see the technique, like the use of color and composition… but it doesn’t connect to any message or feeling that comes to mind. I can’t explain it well in words… but you can’t know someone well just by exchanging greetings, pleasantries, or business-like conversation. It’s… that kind of feeling.”
“You can be more honest.”
He was convinced that I was hiding a harsher critique of this painting. He was pushing me to pour it all out honestly until the very end. I looked at him, his eyes twinkling and a smile even playing on his lips, and gave up on lying that there was nothing more. I opened my mouth after hesitating several times.
“It has form but no content… a beautiful vessel and table setting, but no food to actually taste and savor… That’s how it feels to me.”
I didn’t want to speak of another’s work in that way. Even if it was purely my personal impression, as someone who had never properly studied painting, and even if the artist wasn’t somewhere listening to these words.
Whether it was a work that honestly revealed itself or not, it was, in the end, a piece torn from an individual, and unless it was praise, I didn’t want to put it into words.
But contrary to my feelings, he turned his back completely on the painting to face me with a very satisfied expression. His movements were even light. A contented smile seemed to overflow from his lips. It was the most abundant smile he had shown, not because of anyone else, but because of me.
What could possibly be so good?
“This makes it seem like I think of you as a fortune-teller, Mr. Seo Yeehyeon. ‘What do you see in this painting, what do you see in that painting.’”
Then he bent his waist slightly to match my eye level.
“But still. That fortune-teller is the real deal.”
He was still smiling, but for a moment, I felt a chilling coldness from him. The blue light in his eyes intensified, as if ice flowers were bursting forth. The eeriness wasn’t directed at me, but the back of my neck still prickled.
For me to be the real deal meant, in other words, that he completely agreed with my impression of the painting. He was sending a very frigid cynicism toward that painting, toward ‘Lovers on a Bed’.
“Are you interested in the work? Can I help you?”
He and I turned our heads toward the sound. A middle-aged white man of medium height, with a protruding belly and a slightly receding hairline, spoke to us with a gentle smile.
Everyone was generally kind to him. It might have been partly due to his beautiful appearance, but anyone would be kind to a ‘customer’ who seemed to have the financial means to buy anything that caught his fancy on the spot.
“I scouted this artist myself, so I can recommend him with confidence. He’s one of the young artists who has been making a gentle splash in the New York art scene recently. I’m sure a gentleman like you has heard of his name. He’s drawing attention for his sensual use of color and confident expression. He’s a Korean artist still in his twenties, and with the recent trend of artists from the East gaining strength globally, he’s an artist with high investment value. His style seems to suit you very well, sir. Besides this piece, we have two more works by the same artist. Would you like to take a look?”
The white man, who at first glance had a round and warm impression, had an unusual glint in his eyes upon closer inspection. Unlike his relaxed expression, his ceaseless words gave us, no, gave him, no room to interject. With my English skills, learned through high school, it was a struggle just to keep up with his words.
At his explanation that he had scouted the artist himself, I checked the ID card hanging around the man’s neck and saw the title ‘Director’ in front of a common name one might encounter in English-language dramas or movies. It seemed he was not just a simple staff member but a person in charge of the gallery.
“Sensual and confident….”
Turning his body diagonally to face the painting halfway again, he muttered, as if mulling over the man’s words. He tapped his own cheek with the end of the rolled-up pamphlet in his crossed arms. And then, turning only his face, he looked at me.
“Do you think that painting and I suit each other?”
He asked in Korean. His face was smiling, but he made no effort to hide the impression that he felt quite insulted by what he had just heard.
I shook my head in response to his question.
He smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. The hand that had squeezed my shoulder once, as if kneading it, moved to my head, lightly tousled my hair, and then pulled away.
It was completely unexpected skinship. This kind of physical contact was frequent with Juhan hyung or Yuni noona, but it had never extended to me until now.
Even though we had been ‘Lovers on a Bed’ to each other, albeit just once, this kind of skinship occurring in daily life had felt like a more awkward contact for us than the one-night stand that had happened like a sudden accident. Until now.
Heat rose to my face as if he had just given me a passionate kiss in the middle of this venue. Taking advantage of the moment he turned his upper body toward the director, I raised my arm and rubbed my face, pretending to wipe away sweat. But the air conditioning was running so strongly that the inside was slightly cool.
Shaking his head slowly as if dealing with something highly suspicious, he cast his gaze toward the painting once more.
“Hmm… I’m in the same line of work, you see. Inflating and packaging a work beyond its actual worth is a sales tactic I use all the time myself, but, well… If I were to buy a piece for $15,000 that’s obviously going to be worth half that in a year or two, it would just make the gallery’s discerning eye look questionable.”
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