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The number of visitors showed no sign of dwindling, even on the last day. No, it seemed the final day drew the largest crowd of all.
Until then, there had been little need for me to help with customer service, but on the last day, I had to assist with simple inquiries. Sales were also the highest on the final day. Since the artworks weren’t cheap, it seemed many general visitors spent the entire fair carefully comparing pieces before making up their minds on the last day.
Phantom’s performance at the fair was excellent.
We hadn’t reached our target, but that was only because the other members were so ambitious that they had set the bar high. The results were impressive enough, and while the members might have been slightly disappointed in an ideal sense, they seemed satisfied in a realistic one.
With about five or six hours left until closing, out of some 120 works, all but about ten had been sold, excluding the pieces by artist Shushu, who had signed an exhibition contract with a Chicago gallery.
“Are you tired?”
As I kept checking my old sports watch, Noona sidled up to me, tapped my shoulder, and asked. It must have looked like I was checking the time because I wanted it to be over, so I gave an awkward smile and rubbed the back of my neck.
“No. I’m waiting for someone….”
Noona wore a curious expression but didn’t press for details. A visitor appeared, showing interest in one of the ten remaining pieces, and she quickly put on a professional smile and walked over.
The person I was waiting for was a member of a family that had visited our booth on the second day of the fair.
The father was of Northeast Asian descent, and the mother was a Westerner who seemed to have a bit of Latin blood. They were a rather large family with four children. The eldest son looked to be around my age, while the youngest appeared to be about ten. The children, with their wide age gaps and distinct personalities, had visited our booth in casual attire but with faces as serious as any critic.
Their expressions were so grave as they examined the art that at first, I wasn’t sure if they were actually a family. But if they weren’t, there was no other way to explain that unique combination of people transcending race and age.
“We’re looking for a new painting for our living room.”
It was the youngest of the family who turned to me, standing back behind the visitors, and said this. He had his mother’s curly hair and reddish cheeks, and his father’s dark eyes, a lovely child.
I was worried about my clumsy English, but with both Noona and Hyung busy with other customers, I had no choice. I forced a smile, which must have been stiff and awkward, and approached him.
“I’m turning ten this fall. We’re changing the painting in the living room to celebrate.”
“Really? That’s cool. Happy early birthday.”
Just hearing me wish him a happy birthday, the child beamed as if he had received a magnificent gift.
“This painting is a candidate, too.”
The child’s small finger pointed to In-woo hyung’s work. It was the only piece of his we had brought to the fair.
“So far, this one is in first place.”
At first glance, In-woo hyung’s work was reminiscent of a cartoon—simple and clear, yet with heavy colors and a grotesque feeling created through separation and deconstruction. It wasn’t a style one would expect a young child to choose.
“Can I ask what you like about this painting?”
“I have secrets, too. When my family keeps prying even though I don’t want to talk, and I get stressed, it feels like my heart at that time. Something just clicked.”
The child’s articulate answer made me look at Hyung’s work again. The cartoonish figure in the painting, which seemed comical, did indeed look like it was suffering from unwanted attention and pressure. It was just that the pain was trivialized, made into a caricature.
Digging all the way down to expose the raw face of pain could be art, but an honest confession of one’s own weakness, of not having the courage to do so, could also be art. That was why I didn’t dislike In-woo hyung’s work.
Just as the child said, “something clicked.” I felt like I had connected with the child through this piece, and I smiled in empathy.
“Even a ten-year-old has secrets, you know.”
The child added emphatically, turning to his family as if to make sure they heard. His family burst out laughing, looking as if they couldn’t handle how cute he was.
“I think I know what you mean. I can relate, too. I really hope this piece gets chosen.”
The older children, teenagers and up, had their own plans for their free time, so it couldn’t have been easy for a family of six to visit an event like this together on the same day.
The very fact that they had all gathered to seriously discuss and decide on a painting to decorate their family space, the living room, was a small shock.
No, more than a shock, it was an opportunity to reflect on a realm of art I had never considered before—the perspective of the people who look at paintings, who buy and enjoy them.
I had never been a painter, and I had stopped drawing before I could even specifically dream of becoming one, so I had never considered the concept of someone else owning my art. To the me of the past, painting was an act focused on self-expression, on the “I” who was drawing.
But that day, through that family, I was able to paint a concrete picture of the situation and its meaning. If I were to accept his offer and become a Phantom artist, my paintings could become the property of others. I could meet people who would reassign their own meaning to my art, who would bring my paintings into their everyday spaces and let them melt into their lives.
Suddenly, it felt like that might be the only way for a painting to stay alive, not to die.
“What would you have done if someone had bought it in the meantime?”
“It didn’t sell, so it’s fine. I really did leave on time.”
At the sound of the common bickering that can happen in a family, I turned my head. Seeing the arrival of the customers I had been waiting for, a natural smile spread across my face this time.
The family, who had returned to Phantom amidst the squabbling of what looked like the two eldest brothers, purchased In-woo hyung’s painting. They didn’t request delivery and took the artwork with them on the spot.
Watching their backs as they disappeared into the bustling crowd, the painting tucked carefully under an arm, I envied In-woo hyung.
For some artists, fame or financial success might be a higher priority, but wouldn’t being chosen by someone who truly understood their work be the happiest thing for most artists? That presumptuous guess kept knocking on the shell of my dull heart, which I had allowed to grow numb and had neglected.
It wasn’t just them.
The teenage students who came with backpacks and laughed joyfully as they came up with their own quirky interpretations of the art; the couples who enjoyed a date, strolling through the venue as if on a walk; the affectionate-looking parents and children; the elderly couple who discussed the works with considerable insight and knowledge…
Throughout the fair, I was deeply impressed by the atmosphere itself—not just people from the art industry, but a wide variety of general visitors freely enjoying and comfortably embracing art.
If I could paint pictures that weren’t just solemnly appreciated as objects of admiration and awe, but that shared in all the ordinary days and special moments of regular people—above their sofas, in their entryways, at the head of their beds—and in doing so, became a part of their lives… couldn’t a new era open up for me, one with a different meaning than what painting had held for me before?
If that was too grand a phrase, couldn’t I discover a new meaning, different from before?
I couldn’t be sure if I still had the strength to speak through painting.
But the thought of a painting’s potential—to become a part of someone’s life, to be reborn not just as ‘a painting I drew’ but as ‘someone else’s painting’—felt like it was chiseling and hammering away at my dulled heart.
I don’t know if this was his planned and intended strategy.
But even for the Golden Alpha, Liu Weikun, he couldn’t possibly have predicted a situation where such-and-such a family would visit our booth and create such-and-such an episode.
But if, perhaps, his aim was for me to receive a thrilling shock and stimulation through people who freely enjoyed and loved art in their own ways… then I felt I had to admit the effectiveness of his strategy.
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“Something like that happened? ‘Something clicked,’ he said. That kid is something else. He’s going to be someone great when he grows up.”
In-woo hyung put down his beer glass and nodded emphatically, a cheerful look on his face.
It seemed it was the first time anyone was hearing the story, not just Hyung, because contrary to my intention, everyone had stopped eating and was focused on me.
“I just thought they were cute because of the big age gap between the siblings. I had no idea there was a story like that. Now that I know, they’re even cuter, aren’t they?”
Yuni noona, who had handled that family’s payment, also smiled warmly and patted my shoulder.
“It’s not like it was sold to a famous collector or gallery, so it won’t do much for your career, but it is a heartwarming story.”
He said this as he picked up a piece of lamb with his long chopsticks and swished it in the spicy red broth. In-woo hyung’s eyes immediately narrowed.
Noticing the glare, he shrugged.
“What? It is a heartwarming story. Who said it wasn’t?”
“Ah, yes. From a dealer’s perspective, compared to an artist like Shushu who landed an exhibition contract with a major Chicago gallery, I’m just a ‘good-for-nothing’ nobody.”
“Don’t put yourself down like that when you don’t even think that way.”
I thought In-woo hyung would be happy to hear the story of how his painting was sold. I had brought it up with that simple thought, but the atmosphere was gradually turning strange. I brought the chopsticks I’d been about to use to pick up a clam to my mouth, then, after glancing back and forth between the two of them, quietly set them down.
“Why are you two fighting over nothing again? We were having a nice meal. You act like kids sometimes.”
The Manager, noticing me watching the two of them, stepped in to mediate, but the ping-pong-like conversation continued.
“How do you know what I think and what I don’t?”
“You and Shushu have fundamentally different levels of gravity when it comes to your work. You know that perfectly well, and you only expect a result that matches the effort and passion you’ve invested. You have no intention of belittling your work in comparison to Shushu or anyone else, but you also have no intention of diving in more seriously. A moderate result for a moderate effort. You’re satisfied with that, so what’s the big deal?”
Swirling another piece of lamb in the red broth to cook it, he spoke leisurely and without hesitation.
“Hmm. I guess you can’t fool the eyes of a guy who makes a living selling paintings.”
At In-woo hyung’s playful response, he shook his head as if to say he was hopeless, then dipped the cooked meat in sauce and put it in his mouth.
If Noona hadn’t whispered to me that the two of them were always like Tom and Jerry and that I should just ignore them and eat, I would have thought it was a real, emotionally charged war of nerves. And I would have blamed myself for bringing up a needless topic.
It was the first Friday after our Hong Kong trip, and we were finally having a late wrap-up party after catching up on work that had piled up during the trip.
When he told her to book a place she wanted to eat at, Noona had chosen a Chinese restaurant specializing in hot pot and dim sum. I had tried dim sum in Hong Kong, but hot pot was a first for me.
As soon as the pot, divided in half with a milky white mushroom broth like bone soup and a fiery red broth like a pit of hell, was placed on the table, the door to our private room slid open and In-woo hyung popped in, saying he’d heard about the dinner from Juhan hyung. For some reason, his mood had seemed low ever since then, and it had been bothering me.
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