Once, I was strolling down a street, and looked up. The sky was clear, no clouds, no birds, no airships, no sun. Some kind of void.
  Some other day, as I was walking along the street, I looked up in a daze. The sky was empty. And so it goes.
  Then again, sometimes, just by matter of luck, it’s quite different. Flocks of owls and parrots, clouds, snow or  hail, sun or moons and a cow, planes, helicopters and blimps, shooting stars and flying saucers, stones and cakes, and all the whatnots that aliens pound on us  because of  a strange whim they might fancy, fly over your head humming a song that blends the very best of a Viennese Waltz, Hawaïan Greetings and the usual Christmas carrols… And so the show goes on ; it might be empty skies, it might be dense porridge overcast, but if you blink you could well catch quite another programme. This is where Ho-Yeol Ryu comes in.

You see, if ever you do, it’s not quite what it looks like. Of course, drop your egg, it will make quite a mess. Well in Ryu’s case, not at all. You might even get a voucher for dropping it again and again, and later enjoy the perfect soft boiled egg that adorns any deserving breakfast. So one might consider the artist’s work as either breakfast, or egg. That’s soft boiled egg. The story here is that one is given total freedom in believing what and how as much as one cares. The Art of Mr. Ryu isn’t just an easy trick, albeit tricks abound, and maybe only because it is art, they do so. It’s demanding as ever. It asks for an experience where the victim abides one rule. It cares to believe, whatever strikes his mind. Then, everything is instant, it‘s fizzy,  it’s selzer.
  And it’s instant. Ho-Yeol Ryu creates works in a visual haiku format, and if it bangs you on the head, access is then given to yet more of the same, meaning a paradox in contemplation. What you get, is what you see. But, your mind had much less expectations. That’s it !… it’s Superpowers !
  It’s a simple as it gets. You believe your eyes, you trust the physics, and you are happy to be fooled. Truth is, there is more than any expectation ever available in the earthly stores of our minds on this planet. It’s good that a whole other brand of these expectations have been flown down to us by creatures from outerspace. And it seems, if you blink more than once, that shadows of these messengers float around in Ryu’s works. Lots of things float in his pieces in fact. Gems from outerlands that study the chords of our intelligence, our perception, our reactivity, and other goodies from the old days.
  Parker Williams once told me a story. John Cage met Alan Watts. John Cage blinked. Alan Watts did not. And Buckminster Fuller invented the Geodesic Dome.
  I never got what this meant. I blinked, and did not. I looked into the sky, there was nothing. I just looked into the sky.

By john armleder, Geneva, March 2006