Jacobs’ Booth’s inaugural presentation, titled Pocalyeap, marks the Belgian debut of award-winning Korean artist Sinae Yoo.

Derivative Messiah is Sinae Yoo’s latest ongoing interdisciplinary exhibition project. The film examines a messianic subject using various media such as performance, video, CGI, 3D print, ceramic, sound, and music composed by AI.

The overall narrative of the film revolves around an individual’s trauma induced by a transformation of 21st-century Messianism. In this secular messianism, we no longer wait for a Messiah full of promises. We anticipate, in our own ways, the interminable procession of the defeated and oppressed from the past; we possess the formidable power to either prolong or interrupt their agony. In fact, the present can always redistribute the cards and roles, changing the meaning of the past by contradicting the history written by the victors. The last word is never spoken, and we always have obligations to messianic debts. This secularized messianism is no longer passive patience waiting to be met, but the active and restless expectation of the sentinel, always ready for the sudden appearance of possibility.

Partially borrowing the theological idea that the end-of-time savior will eventually arrive one day but has not yet arrived, the artist captures a never-ending moment of waiting, highlighting the overpowering, narcissistic elements of salvation that operate like today’s organized religions.

At the same time, the Pocalyeap accessories highlight our technology-dominated society by integrating SD and SIM cards into jewelry – the accessories closest to our skin. The voice-over in the film warns against the threats this ubiquity of technology poses: “Technology, it has the power to destroy. Don’t let it destroy your life. Don’t let technology take up all the space within your brain. Technology: devices to be used. But just make sure that device does not use you.” However, the digital/technological elements are combined with natural components, such as gemstones. Yoo still draws from nature and blends the uber-digitized with the handmade, the artisanal. In her work, Yoo often ventures into painting and ceramics.

There are numerous historical examples where artists create jewelry, but perhaps the most prolific were the Surrealists, who saw this wearable art as part of a total artwork or Gesamtkunstwerk (have a look at Max Ernst’s bedroom design, for instance). Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Meret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, and Man Ray are only a few of the artists who explored the potential of jewelry design as an extension and continuation of their artistic practice. While they introduced the spontaneity of form stemming from their automatic writing/creation, Sinae Yoo innovates by incorporating actual technological components into jewelry, presenting them atop a levitating platform.

Within her oeuvre, Yoo has shown a propensity for medieval religious signifiers, both in the form her canvases take, mirroring medieval panels and triptychs, and in her use of medieval symbols such as the Baphomet, a pagan demon/deity that has become an occult icon and a recurring figure in Yoo’s work.

In his book Dogme et ritual de la haute magie (1861; Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual), the influential French occultist Éliphas Lévi created the Baphomet that has become a recognized occult icon. The book’s frontispiece was a drawing of Baphomet imagined as a “Sabbatic Goat”—a hermaphroditic winged human figure with the head and feet of a goat, adorned with numerous esoteric symbols. But the figure itself has been around and worshipped since the 12th century.

In 2016, Yoo was awarded the Aeschliman Corti Award, which is known as the largest private art prize in Bern. Her first solo exhibition took place at the Kunsthaus Langenthal in the same year. In 2017, she received a commission from Canton Bern and her work has become part of the Seoul Museum of Art Collections. In 2018, her video was displayed at the Swiss Art Award in Basel. In 2019, she received the national grant from the Arts Council Korea and opened her solo exhibition at the Center For Contemporary Art Futura in Prague. In 2020, she participated in an online project with the Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2021, she collaborated with LG x PEACHES. In 2022, she received a commission to produce a video for the Ulsan Art Museum.

At the latest edition of Frieze Seoul, CYLINDER was awarded the Focus Asia Stand Prize 2023 for their solo presentation of Sinae Yoo. The artist created an installation consisting of a new series of works including an altarpiece and smaller votive-like paintings that were unveiled from behind curtains, the series collectively titled ‘Post Truth’, exploring how the concept has become increasingly relevant in our modern society, where objective facts are often dismissed in favour of subjective beliefs and opinions.

Yoo has been putting up art projects and exhibitions as an exhibition maker (under the moniker ‘MEEK’) since 2019.

To learn more about this work and Jacobs’ Booth
CONTACT US

Jacobs’ Booth’s inaugural presentation, titled Pocalyeap, marks the Belgian debut of award-winning Korean artist Sinae Yoo.

Derivative Messiah is Sinae Yoo’s latest ongoing interdisciplinary exhibition project. The film examines a messianic subject using various media such as performance, video, CGI, 3D print, ceramic, sound, and music composed by AI.

The overall narrative of the film revolves around an individual’s trauma induced by a transformation of 21st-century Messianism. In this secular messianism, we no longer wait for a Messiah full of promises. We anticipate, in our own ways, the interminable procession of the defeated and oppressed from the past; we possess the formidable power to either prolong or interrupt their agony. In fact, the present can always redistribute the cards and roles, changing the meaning of the past by contradicting the history written by the victors. The last word is never spoken, and we always have obligations to messianic debts. This secularized messianism is no longer passive patience waiting to be met, but the active and restless expectation of the sentinel, always ready for the sudden appearance of possibility.

Partially borrowing the theological idea that the end-of-time savior will eventually arrive one day but has not yet arrived, the artist captures a never-ending moment of waiting, highlighting the overpowering, narcissistic elements of salvation that operate like today’s organized religions.

At the same time, the Pocalyeap accessories highlight our technology-dominated society by integrating SD and SIM cards into jewelry – the accessories closest to our skin. The voice-over in the film warns against the threats this ubiquity of technology poses: “Technology, it has the power to destroy. Don’t let it destroy your life. Don’t let technology take up all the space within your brain. Technology: devices to be used. But just make sure that device does not use you.” However, the digital/technological elements are combined with natural components, such as gemstones. Yoo still draws from nature and blends the uber-digitized with the handmade, the artisanal. In her work, Yoo often ventures into painting and ceramics.

There are numerous historical examples where artists create jewelry, but perhaps the most prolific were the Surrealists, who saw this wearable art as part of a total artwork or Gesamtkunstwerk (have a look at Max Ernst’s bedroom design, for instance). Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Meret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, and Man Ray are only a few of the artists who explored the potential of jewelry design as an extension and continuation of their artistic practice. While they introduced the spontaneity of form stemming from their automatic writing/creation, Sinae Yoo innovates by incorporating actual technological components into jewelry, presenting them atop a levitating platform.

Within her oeuvre, Yoo has shown a propensity for medieval religious signifiers, both in the form her canvases take, mirroring medieval panels and triptychs, and in her use of medieval symbols such as the Baphomet, a pagan demon/deity that has become an occult icon and a recurring figure in Yoo’s work.

In his book Dogme et ritual de la haute magie (1861; Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual), the influential French occultist Éliphas Lévi created the Baphomet that has become a recognized occult icon. The book’s frontispiece was a drawing of Baphomet imagined as a “Sabbatic Goat”—a hermaphroditic winged human figure with the head and feet of a goat, adorned with numerous esoteric symbols. But the figure itself has been around and worshipped since the 12th century.

In 2016, Yoo was awarded the Aeschliman Corti Award, which is known as the largest private art prize in Bern. Her first solo exhibition took place at the Kunsthaus Langenthal in the same year. In 2017, she received a commission from Canton Bern and her work has become part of the Seoul Museum of Art Collections. In 2018, her video was displayed at the Swiss Art Award in Basel. In 2019, she received the national grant from the Arts Council Korea and opened her solo exhibition at the Center For Contemporary Art Futura in Prague. In 2020, she participated in an online project with the Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2021, she collaborated with LG x PEACHES. In 2022, she received a commission to produce a video for the Ulsan Art Museum.

At the latest edition of Frieze Seoul, CYLINDER was awarded the Focus Asia Stand Prize 2023 for their solo presentation of Sinae Yoo. The artist created an installation consisting of a new series of works including an altarpiece and smaller votive-like paintings that were unveiled from behind curtains, the series collectively titled ‘Post Truth’, exploring how the concept has become increasingly relevant in our modern society, where objective facts are often dismissed in favour of subjective beliefs and opinions.

Yoo has been putting up art projects and exhibitions as an exhibition maker (under the moniker ‘MEEK’) since 2019.

To learn more about this work and Jacobs’ Booth
CONTACT US