Title of art	몽펠리에 2013년 5월 29일/Montpellier, May 29. 2013			Sector	Painting (회화)
Art specifications	182?250cm			Material technique	Oil on canvas
Collection year	2014			Production year	2013
Gallery	Seoul Museum of Art			Artist	Hong, Soun
Description of art	“Montpellier, May 29. 2013” (2013) is based on a news footage covering France’s first same-sex marriage held at the Montpellier City Hall on May 29, 11 days after the legalization of gay marriage in the country. Hong extracts only a part from the photograph and reveals as little context of the event as possible in order to minimize the interference of prejudice generated by the image; therefore, the sight of the painting does not allow a knowledge of what is happening. The part he chooses to paint is once again divided into 15 canvases, each of which, when closely observed, looks like a piece of abstract painting. As the gap between the actually reported “event” and the painting’s space on the canvas grows, several questions fill the widening vacuum. The coexistence of our perception on the event and our emotions generated by the sight of the painting not only triggers a fundamental question “What are we looking at?” but also makes the viewer speculate and imagine what hidden reality, stories, and diluted facts lie behind this social and political incident selected by Hong himself and wonder why there are so diverse perspectives on the event.
Address	61, Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul			Source	Seoul Metropolitan Government