Right Now, Wrong Then

Noémie Degen/Simon Jaton

Karen Fan

Jack O'Brien

Patrick Sarmiento

"What’s your favorite show that’s up?” “What’s your favorite gallery?” “What artists have you been looking at?” “What’s your favorite artwork from 2023?”

I get these questions more often than not, and usually my mind draws a blank. In passing, I’m sure you could catch me talking about a new discovery at some gallery’s after-party. However, when faced with the above questions, I will not be of much help, despite our fixation to rank, collect, and recollect.

This show, Right Now, Wrong Then, is named after a film by Hong Sang-Soo. His films’ realism, near-comic interpersonal dramas, are infiltrated by missed opportunities, second chances, Matryoshka-doll narrative layers, and autofictional references to the director himself. In his film Right Now, Wrong Then, a man and a woman meet: a painter and an independent film director. The seemingly romantic night doesn’t go according to plan. Halfway through the runtime, the film starts over, and a subtly different chain of events between the two characters and their inebriated friends take place. When one door closes, another opens.

Organizing an exhibition is not dissimilar to editing a film. Montage provides the sense that actions are taking place, time collapsing as characters move toward a purpose. Sang-Soo does not like to use the ‘cut’ often. He prefers static shots and long-zooms, especially when his characters say embarrassing things when they are drunk. In those moments, there is nowhere to turn. The audience is left to experience the good and bad, the painfully boring, funny, and cathartic dialogue. And yet there we are, right back at the beginning, halfway through the film. Sang-Soo does not forget that the cut must be used to progress the film, like being roused from a reverie.

In this show there is no cumulative narrative. Curating, list making, Top Tens, 30 under 30s, who made the cut? There is no fixed perspective; no right, no wrong; no beginning, no ending; no best, no worst. Like Sang-Soo, this show projects what is right in front of your face: my attention brought back to reality after some brief moments of bliss.

Noémie Degen/Simon Jaton (b. 1996/b. 1994) are a Paris and Lausanne-based artist duo. Recent solo exhibitions include Diez Gallery, (Amsterdam, NL), and a solo presentation at Paris Internationale with Diez Gallery (Paris, FR). Select presentations include i tried being myself, i ended being others, curated by Mohamed Almusibli, Lovay Fine Arts (Geneva, CH), Universitätsgalerie im Heligenkreuzer Hof, Die Angewandte (Vienna, AT), Trieze (Paris, FR), The Community (Paris, FR), YoyogiPark (Tokyo, JP), and Sattelkammer (Bern, CH).

Karen Fan (b. 2002) is currently a student studying Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in Theory and History of Art and Design. Recent exhibitions include Earth Born, a two-person exhibition with Caroline Zhang curated by Joe W. Speier at Gern en Regalia, (New York, NY).

Jack O’Brien (b. 1993) lives and works in London. O'Brien was the 2023 recipient of the Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize, awarded for his solo presentation at Frieze London with Ginny on Frederick (London, UK). O'Brien's show at the Camden Art Centre (London, UK) will be staged in 2024. Recent solo presentations include Between Bridges Foundation (Berlin, DE), Sans titre (Paris, FR), and Ginny on Frederick (London, UK). Selected group exhibitions include Capitain Petzel (Berlin, DE), Linseed Projects (Shanghai, CN), Gathering (London, UK), FOMO Art Space (Zurich, CH), Lovaas Projects (Munich, DE), Kunsthalle Bratislava (Bratislava, SK), and Polamagnetczne Gallery (Warsaw, PL).

Patrick Sarmiento (b. 1990) lives and works in New York. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Zak's (New York, NY), Camp Eternal Hell Chamber (Cobleskill, New York), Y2K Group, with Luke O'Halloran curated by Sara Blazej (New York, NY), and East Hampton Shed, with Chloe Seibert (East Hampton, NY).