Nicolas Pelzer’s installation has been specially created for the Book Lounge at the Art Sonje Center. It consists of five curtains that are fixed at two walls in the Book Lounge area as well as two modified tables. The satin curtains are digitally printed with a repeated motif of an abstract tie-dye image that was originally created in a handmade process by the artist. Through the postproduction process of digitally cutting out the image, some parts of the curtains remain blank as the white satin fabric. The curtains are finally posed in different open or closed states. The two tables located in front of the curtains display a selection of artist publications. The wooden boards that usually belong on top of each table are replaced with two smaller glass panes of oblique shapes. The size of the glass relates to the space that is needed for presenting the selected books.

This lounge project focuses on the physical presence and materiality of the actual space. The title of the show “In Real World” refers to the short cut “IRW” which is an internet slang that is used to describe the world outside the virtual world. Due to the growing influence by new media and especially by the internet, it is clear that the value of the real world is changing dramatically and the artist calls attention to the need to rethink today’s meaning of our everyday physical life.

The curtain installation can be understood as a site-specific intervention in the architecture of the Art Sonje Book Lounge. By hanging the curtains on walls without windows, the work not only relates to the concrete architectural construction that divides its environment into an inside and an outside, it also deals directly with familiar viewing structures in the real space. Instead of blocking the view to the outside the digital printed surface of the curtains shows an image that suggests an outside fantasy of a world behind the curtains. A world where the uniqueness of physical objects, such as a handmade curtain become duplicated and converted into several versions.

The tables show a selection of publications from Korean and international artists. The selection gives a broader overview on artist’s interest in dealing with the issue of today’s physical world and its relation to media. The minimal solution of the tables reduces the display to the essential, but also visually evokes the feeling of emptiness. Both elements, the glass tables and the curtains, deal with viewing structures of space. They reflect the here and now of the real world and its physical and immaterial presence.