"Afternoon and Morning" is the name of an exhibition Yunim Kim and Chris Ro held two years ago, and the two artists chose that as a particularly appropriate title for their ARTCaffè.

People often think in terms of opposites—man and woman, night and day, and other age-old ideas about relationships —but their perspective is more nuanced than that. They didn’t want to talk about contrast, but about connection—the shared ways they see the world and the ideas that resonate with both of them in their work.

Interestingly, they don’t actually work together in the traditional sense; they don’t sit down and collaborate on the same piece. But through sharing space and conversation, they deeply influence each other’s practice.

In this talk, they explored four themes: Imperfection, Aging, Layering, and The Intangible—those things you know are there but cannot see, the things you feel with your body and sense intuitively.

These four themes, that shape the way they create, have repeatedly emerged as shared interests in their work.

Chris Ro: Yunim takes all the time photos that are symbolic of our shared perspective. When I look at these images, I see how she perceives the world—and I realize that I see it the same way. Moments like these happen naturally. They are unplanned, imperfect, yet beautiful in their own way. This idea of imperfection is something that recurs constantly in our work.

‍Yunim Kim: I was born and raised in Korea, and throughout my life there, I experienced the immense pressure many Koreans feel—the pressure to strive for perfection. In my younger years, I was a good student, always aiming to be perfect. But as time passed, I realized that perfection was unattainable. The more I accepted my imperfections, the more I felt free. In those imperfect moments, I discovered who I truly am.

Imperfection—how to embrace it and exist as an imperfect human being—has become a central question in my life and work.

Of course, perfect things can be beautiful in their own way—whether in design, function, or form. But I have also found that imperfection, especially in nature and in everyday life, holds its own kind of beauty and happiness.

When I first started learning and practicing traditional crafts, I was drawn to elements of Asian and Korean heritage. A major influence in my life was my grandmother—she raised me, and shaped who I am. She was always present in my life, and through her, I was surrounded by old traditions.

One of the skills I learned was traditional Korean sewing. There are many different styles, but in the beginning, I was trained in very refined, precise stitching. However, as human beings, we are not machines. My sewing teacher and my grandmother both told me, “You don’t need to be perfect. Just breathe, stay calm, and continue your work.”

One day, I cut a thread, pulled it out, and removed it from the fabric. In that moment, I felt free. That small act changed something in me—it opened up a new way of thinking. It created a sense of three-dimensionality in my work, and it made me happy. So I began to incorporate it more and more.

I am drawn to stones and rocks, to natural materials. These objects are imperfect, yet they hold deep beauty. The background in many of my works is made of hanji [traditional Korean handmade paper]. I practiced calligraphy for many years, using ink stones and brushes to draw lines. After the passing of my calligraphy master, who was like a father to me, I couldn’t bring myself to practice for a long time. But eventually, I returned to it, and that was the beginning of my practice with line drawing.

In traditional calligraphy, the process is not just about drawing lines—it is about breath, movement, and being present. Each day, I would draw lines on paper, and over time, I accumulated so many pages filled with these strokes. One day, I happened to look at the back of a sheet of paper and realized it was more beautiful than the front. From then on, I decided to use the reverse side in my work.

Another material I use is antique fabric—handmade, aged textiles with irregularities and inconsistencies. Unlike machine-made fabric, these pieces have natural variations, subtle distortions, and unique characteristics. The passage of time makes them even more distinct.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the themes of language and communication. People often think that because we speak the same language, we automatically understand one another. But communication is not always that simple, and even when we share a language, we can still fail to connect. And sometimes, even without words, we can understand each other deeply.

This idea fascinates me. Through abstraction and simplicity, my work seeks to explore those unspoken, intuitive forms of communication—things that cannot be seen or said, yet can still be felt and understood.

Chris Ro: There was a brand-new building across from our old place, a three-story villa. It was completely new, yet between the second and third floors, there was a piece of tape stuck to the facade. Every day, as I walked to work, I would see this tape, and it started to drive me crazy. This is an example of imperfection—one that became a bit of an obsession for me.

This small, insignificant piece of tape made me question something fundamental. My background is in architecture and graphic design, so I asked myself: Why does this tape bother me so much? The building itself was unremarkable, but this tiny imperfection gave it something unexpected—something that made it more interesting. So why was I so desperate to remove it?

I realized this urge to "fix" the tape was tied to my ingrained sense of order—what I had been taught about what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what isn’t. That realization led me to question these ideas of correctness and perfection more deeply.

As a response, I began experimenting with ways to disrupt my own habits and break free from these rigid expectations, such as using my non-dominant hand to create drawings, covering my eyes while making forms, or anything that would challenge my natural tendency to make things correct.

Since my background is in graphic design and printing, I was used to obsessing over perfection. In printing, there are always press checks—we work closely with printers, making tiny adjustments to ensure the colors are exactly right, and that everything aligns perfectly. But I wanted to do the opposite.

Before any printing process, I would do test prints. Sometimes, these prints had unexpected mistakes—misaligned layers, ink bleeding, strange color shifts. And I found that I loved these accidents. The prints that were completely “messed up” fascinated me.

This led me to explore imperfection more intentionally in my work. I began asking: What if I embrace these mistakes? What if I go deeper into these moments of unpredictability?

That’s how my practice evolved from traditional graphic design into what it is today. My process now is something I call "pr-ainting"—a mix of printing and painting. It’s a bit of a cheesy term, but it captures the way I use silk-screen printing as a meditative, painterly process rather than a technical one.

I work in a way that most traditional printmakers would probably hate, as I break every rule of printmaking. Instead of striving for perfect, repeatable prints, I intentionally create prints that cannot be reproduced.

The whole point of traditional printing is to make something consistent. But I actively work against that. I lean into the unpredictability, the things that happen in the moment and can’t be repeated.

This is where my practice has taken me—embracing imperfection, breaking away from rigid expectations, and finding beauty in the things that don’t go as planned.

Chris Ro: Aging is something that both Yunim and I are deeply fascinated by. We are drawn to things that change and evolve naturally over time. Perhaps this interest comes from societal pressures, or maybe from personal experiences, but we find beauty in things that age—things that wear down, weather, and slowly become part of their environment.

‍Yunim Kim: I have a complicated relationship with aging—I love it, but I also hate it. I’m getting older. Sometimes I embrace it, and other times it feels overwhelming.

A couple of years ago, my father faced the challenges of aging. He had dementia, and his body slowly stopped functioning. He forgot so much of his beautiful life. It was difficult to witness. During that time, I found myself thinking about him a lot, and I started working with stones and rocks as symbols of aging and layering.

One day, I held his body, and I had a strange realization—his body felt different, as if it had transformed into something else, something fragile but still profoundly present. His existence, even in that state, still brought me comfort. I’m an only child, so I carried the full responsibility of taking care of my parents. It felt like a heavy burden at times. And in my work, I wanted to explore that feeling—something physically light, yet emotionally heavy. That’s how I began making these stones made of paper clay.

These explorations extended into my installations and performances. In one project, I placed similar objects—small stones—throughout the space, letting them subtly exist within the environment.

Beyond my personal works, I’ve always been drawn to the traces of aging in the world around me. I’m constantly looking for signs of wear—cracks in the pavement, eroded surfaces, the way time alters a space. I often walk through my studio’s neighborhood, which is full of old streets. When you look at them closely, they are patched and repaired over time, layered with different materials—stone, concrete, asphalt—each layer holding a story.

I began documenting these textures, doing rubbings of the ground—pressing paper onto surfaces, capturing the imprints left by time. And within these patterns, I found unexpected things—tiny landscapes, flowing water-like shapes, even animals appearing in the abstract textures.

One of my performances was centered around this idea. The gallery space had a textured floor, and I used talc—which is actually baby powder. For the performance, I brushed the powder onto the floor, letting it settle into the cracks. The powder revealed hidden patterns, emphasizing the lines and imperfections, making them visible.

These fragments—whether in my objects, rubbings, or performances—are all about preserving and revealing the unnoticed.

I even collect small pieces of the streets, bits of the broken ground that I take home with me. Chris tells me: Stop taking these things! But I love them. They carry the history of a place, the marks of time.

‍Chris Ro: Last year, I created an installation for the Changwon Sculpture Biennale that examined the balance between planning and improvisation.

Changwon is a planned city, divided into three distinct parts. During my research, I noticed something peculiar—like many planned cities, it felt extremely quiet. No offense to anyone from Changwon, but as I walked around, I kept thinking, Why does it feel so sleepy?

Through my research, I discovered that many planned cities in Korea share a similar phenomenon. The roads are wide, the structures are uniform and modular, and because of this, people don’t interact as they would in organically grown cities. The design itself prevents natural encounters.

For this project, I wanted to capture that feeling—the quietness, the stillness—but also challenge the idea of rigid planning. I decided to work in a more intuitive way. Instead of carefully mapping out my installation, I arrived and simply responded to the space in the moment.

The exhibition took place in Masan, one of the older parts of Changwon, where the streets are winding and organic. This juxtaposition—the planned versus the unplanned—became central to the work. The exhibition space itself was structured and rigid, but my installation resisted that logic, introducing something more fluid and unexpected.

Yunim Kim: Layers exist everywhere—within buildings, landscapes, and life itself. They form unexpectedly, sometimes through human intervention, sometimes through nature.

One night in my neighborhood, I saw workers cutting down trees in a beautiful garden. By the next morning, the branches were stacked in piles. That fleeting moment—seeing something whole, then fragmented, then reconfigured—felt profound to me. It was a perfect representation of layering.

This idea carried into another project, where I installed wires wrapped in yarn. I repeated this process over and over, creating a system of lines and textures. Visitors were invited to touch the installation, shifting and reshaping it. Every time someone interacted with it, new layers emerged, constantly evolving the piece.

I also invited visitors to collect stones from the street—objects that already carried history within them. They placed these stones into the installation, creating yet another layer of meaning. Each visit transformed the piece into something new, making the process itself an ongoing collaboration.

Chris Ro: I made an installation in an old kaofu storage facility in Kyeong-dong, Seoul— a space that had been around since 1955. The moment I entered, I could feel its history—layers of time, whispers of past events embedded in the walls.

At first, the space felt overwhelming. How do you add to something that already holds so much? The curator suggested the theme of “layers,” which perfectly aligned with my practice. But instead of imposing something heavy onto the space, I decided to work with transparency. I experimented with materials that wouldn’t disrupt the existing energy—nothing opaque, nothing that would cut off the visual flow. I wanted everything to remain connected, to allow the space to breathe.

The result was a series of transparent works that played with depth and perception. In some pieces, I used subtle shadows to create the illusion of layers within a two-dimensional space. In others, I explored the relationship between front and back, ensuring that nothing was hidden—every part remained visible, every layer exposed.

This project reinforced an idea I keep returning to: time itself is a layering process. Spaces, objects, and even people accumulate history, becoming richer and more complex with each passing moment.

Chris Ro: Our last theme, The Intangible, is a bit more abstract—maybe even a little hokey pokey—but it’s something we all experience.

There are things in the world that we know exist, even if we can’t see or measure them directly. These are the intangible forces, the unspoken connections, the things that our logical minds might struggle to acknowledge, yet we feel them.

Both of usare deeply intuitive, and this part of our practice is about embracing that—about recognizing the presence of something without needing to define it.

Yunim Kim: One day, I found a large stone on the street. Under the moonlight, I noticed a distinct, circular mark on its surface. Something about it caught my attention, so I brought it back to my studio. I kept looking at it, studying it over and over again.

Eventually,I felt the urge to see beyond its surface. I began rubbing the stone, slowly revealing what was hidden within. The process was immersive—it was as if I was uncovering something that had always been there, waiting to be found. Each circular rubbing became a layer, building upon the last, creating a dialogue between the stone and my own reflections.

Looking closely at the patterns that emerged, I started to recognize shapes, even my own portrait. It wasn’t something I had planned, but something I discovered through the act of making. This is what fascinates me—things we can’t see at first but can still feel. There’s a silent communication that happens, an exchange beyond words.

This idea extends into my Totem series. Traditionally, totems hold symbolic meaning—wishes, prayers, or messages sent to the heavens. My totems, however, are not fixed in meaning. Instead, they explore the fluid nature of communication, how words and wishes can shift and evolve.

Another aspect of this theme is Winter Hibernation. These objects represent akind of deep sleep—a period of stillness where things transform beneath the surface. Just as in our dreams, something continues to exist, even if we cannot see it.

Chris Ro: In 2015, a curator invited me to explore a Hanok architecture. Coming from outside Korea, I was introduced to the concept of Yoon—a kind of feng shui or energy within spaces. Every time I stepped into a Hanok, I could feel it. That got me wondering: If I can feel it, maybe everyone else can too? I wanted to find a way to visualize this energy.

I led a workshop with students, asking them to sense the direction of energy in a space using arrows. The idea was that if I closed my eyes and felt something, they might feel it too. But it completely failed. The arrows pointed in every possible direction—there was no clear pattern.

Even though the project didn’t go as planned, the concept of feeling a space remains a major theme in my work. Whether I’m creating an installation or working with a space, I spend time sitting there, just listening. I know this sounds strange, but sometimes it feels like the space itself is telling me where things should go. For example, in an exhibition I did at Nagwan Music Arcade, something told me: Don’t put things on the walls. Just put everything on the ground and see what happens. And I followed that instinct.