Gallery Hyundai presents Open Hands, a collaborative exhibition with Commonwealth and Council. Open Hands is a kind gesture, a generous invitation to gather works by an intergenerational group of artists: Choi Minhwa, Jesse Chun, Eusung Lee, Kang Seung Lee, Woosung Lee, Yong Soon Min, Oh Inhwan, and Sung Neung Kyung . They share a vested interest in Korea while inhabiting different positions in the global diaspora, some in close proximity to marginalized communities and events. This collaboration between the two galleries also offers a site for mutual exchange across continents.

Extending open-endedness beyond physicality and temporality, the title of this exhibition offers the self in perpetuity as a mode of being present with others in the moment of now, alongside those who came before us and those still yet to come. From hands that shake, caress, and express to those that reach out as if to grasp at something, hands that thumb their way through a newspaper, and hands that create, “hands” carry rich associations to cultural functions and meanings. Expanding the reach of gestures to possibilities of interfacing between human beings, the hands in this exhibition explore the boundaries between the symbolic, abstraction, and materiality as well as the embodiment of individual and collective experiences. Indeed, the word “digital” that is so essential to contemporary culture is derived from “digits,” or fingers. Here, the fingertips not only mark where one body ends, but also point towards the beginnings of other bodies in our haptic coexistence.