Lot 645 D

'She discovered the hotel by chance, just as building was completed. Six storeys, with eleven rooms to each floor, rise out of the glass base with the asymmetrical entrance area. A panoramic glass pane, covering exactly the entire width of every room, defines the front of each of the 66 rooms located inside. […] In Sook Kim observed the lively activity inside the hotel at nightfall from a slightly higher position about thirty metres away. Guests arrive, guests check in. They reach their rooms. Opening the door activates the lighting in the individual rooms. At exactly this moment, the room is transformed into a stage: Behind the panoramic glass pane, the guests become protagonists of a play that is determined exclusively by their behaviour, their gestures and their facial expressions. […] As soon as a guest turns off the light, the room sinks into darkness, the play ends. In Sook Kim's decision to choose a hotel as the “location” for the realisation of her project was not only due to its similarity to the structure of a honeycomb, which is heavily frequented by its inhabitants and in which individual cells are arranged next to each other. She was particularly fascinated by the complexity of function and the significance of the hotel as a scene of urban life. […] In In Sook Kim's perception the rented space becomes a free space, a neutral space where actions can take place and unfold for which there is otherwise no space.
In addition to the gestures and facial expressions of the individual actors, who are frozen in the moment of recording, carefully considered and arranged attributive additions accentuate each image. […] Like insects under a microscope, the actors of every single sequence are set in motion and expression in an extremely controlled manner, and at the same time, through the consistent thoroughness of the staging, adapting themselves to the function of the accessories used. […]
The theme, which is elaborated consistently and in differing versions, concerns isolation, the inner emptiness and the deep loneliness of the human being, which unfolds into the staged space and is accentuated by the coloured background light. [….] even where several people are involved and interact in different sexual pastimes, for example, no real contact to one another actually takes place. […] By focusing on isolation, solitariness and loneliness, In Sook Kim simultaneously formulates an immense loss of the human values of self-esteem, such as self-expression, serenity, dignity and integrity, expressed by the lack of interest in the environment, quality of life and fellow human beings. 'Saturday Night' depicts a society that overvalues its own image and reveals that it is insensitive to human needs. (Sabine Schnakenberg, in: In Sook Kim, ibid, p. 20 - 25)