The point of departure for Yeonsu Lim's exhibition "(un)boxing" is the anticipation and handling of packaging in the media age. The artist understands packaging as an attitude: the packaging of an object with other, usually very thin material, in order to separate the packaged thing from the usage by a person who in turn has not bought this thing, i.e. this commodity. Thus, the use of a particular medium in art could also be seen as a kind of packaging, since the latter, due to its structural framework and media limitations, does not directly translate what is depicted into the work. A medium such as photography, for example, not only reveals the appearance of the real to the viewer, but also obscures it at the same time.
An entirely new manifestation of the packaging view has existed for several years: The public display of Unboxing. There are countless unboxing videos on YouTube in which various products are unpacked by hand for the viewers.
In this situation, it is not easy to determine what the product is. Although the unboxing video presents the appearance and function of the unpacked product, it does not do so directly in front of the viewers, but in its own kind of packaging of the presentation format. Unboxing videos convey the feeling of owning the product in the video during playtime despite its media isolation.
Yeonsu Lim's works reveal this paradox to viewers as the artist presents installations along with moving images in the exhibition. The effect of the paradox is also maximized on the spatial level by separating the two exhibition rooms of the research station from each other.The first room is staged as a classic white cube with installations of packaged things by Yeonsu Lim. The works appear here only as silhouettes; they can only be grasped as a whole through the video works in the second room, which is disguised as a black box.Yeonsu Lim thus creates a relationship of tension between her works in which the viewers are the main actors.

traces research station
Lutherplatz (access next to Mauerstraße 13), 34117 Kassel