Image: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul has highlighted O In-hwan’s 'Meeting Time' in a post pointing visitors to postcards placed on the floor of exhibition space 7 and available to take freely. The museum describes the work as an ongoing performative project that the artist began in 1999 and continues to the present.
According to the museum’s text, 'Meeting Time' is built around encounters with acquaintances around the world. When O meets them, the artist photographs their wristwatches side by side. The resulting image pairs record the moment of meeting in a single frame while also registering different times.
The work’s structure depends on the repeated act of meeting rather than on a fixed object alone. By placing two watches together, O turns a simple photograph into a trace of both contact and distance, with the shared space of the encounter joined to the separate time each watch carries.
MMCA Seoul’s brief notice frames the project as something visitors can approach through printed postcards laid out on the floor, suggesting a display format that extends the work beyond the screen or wall image. The museum did not provide further exhibition details in the post, but it identified the artist and work title clearly and noted the project’s long duration.
The title 'Meeting Time' appears in Korean as '만남의 시간' and has been underway since 1999. The museum’s description emphasizes the continuity of the project across years and locations, as well as the way each photographed pair of watches captures a specific encounter in time.
