Location: Seoul, South Korea
Year: 2026
Photography by: Simone Bossi
Presence is a site-specific exhibition by Simone Bossi, commissioned by COOR.
Being present.
Rather than a visual description of a space, I am drawn to the experience of it. Something lived, immediate, and deeply personal.
Space surrounds us and acts upon us.
It shapes our perception, our breath, our movement. A fragment, a trace, a detail can hold us,
shift us, slow us down.
Photography becomes an act of presence.
Being present remains, once again, the deepest image we can make.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Presence explores photography as an act of being within space rather than describing it. The work moves away from representation and focuses instead on experience - something lived, immediate, and deeply personal. Space is not treated as a subject to be documented, but as a condition that surrounds us and acts upon us, shaping perception, breath, and movement.
Fragments, traces, and subtle shifts become points of attention, capable of holding us, slowing us down, and displacing awareness. Through these minimal gestures, the images suggest another rhythm of seeing - rooted in presence, where perception alone calibrates our sense of distance.
Photography becomes a threshold where space is not captured from the outside, but experienced from within, and viewers are invited to relocate and recompose these fragments through their own presence. In this uncertain reconstruction, space emerges as something fragile and unclear, yet closer to a more intimate sense of space.
Here, presence is not only the subject of the work, but also its method and its outcome: the most sincere image we can still make.
THE ACT OF INSTALLATION
The installation is presented within the Seoul flagship store of Korean fashion brand COOR, designed by Atelier KHJ. Conceived not only as a retail space, but also as a place for artistic interventions and exhibitions, the flagship provides a context in which the work can become part of the architecture itself.
The photographs do not simply occupy the space, but reconfigure the experience of it. Nine prints on lightweight cotton paper are held by custom oak bars in a reddish hue, resonating with the warm tones of the concrete and revealing a fragile contrast.
Some images are placed in close relation to the fragments of the architecture from which they originated, creating a space within the space: a subtle correspondence between what is seen in the photograph and what surrounds it.
The viewer is invited to slow down, move, and shift between image and environment, while the coexistence of colour and black-and-white leaves room for personal memory and perception to complete the experience. Text description by the architects.
Source: www.simonebossi.it
Photos curtesy of Simone Bossi
Coor (short for Common Origins) is a contemporary fashion brand founded in Seoul in 2017.
