When we decided to open a gallery, the first question was not which artists to show. It was which artists we wanted to be near.

We look for those still working something out with materials — people using matter in ways art history has not yet named. That kind of practice takes years. It survives failure. It often cannot explain itself yet. So we do not rush it.

Good work doesn't argue. It is simply there. You feel something, or you don't. PBG makes space for that encounter — not for judgment, but for meeting.

Paris was not only a strategic decision. For years we had been uneasy with the way Korean art tends to arrive in the world: introduced, explained, contextualised — until the actual texture of the work disappears in translation. This space is the attempt to let the work arrive first, and be explained second.

Discovery sounds grand. In practice it is simpler: going to studios, looking for a long time, and remembering what does not leave you.

Being NearWhen we decided to open a gallery, the first question was not which artists to show. It was which artists we wanted to be near.

We look for those still wrestling with material — people who handle matter in ways art history has not yet named. That kind of work takes years. It endures failure. Often it cannot yet explain itself. So we do not rush it.

Good work doesn't argue. It is simply there. You feel something, or you don't. PBG opens a space for that meeting — not for judgment, but for encounter.

UntranslatedComing to Paris was not only a strategy. For a long time, I was uneasy with the way Korean art arrives in the world: introduced, explained, contextualised — until the very texture of the work disappears in translation. This space is my attempt to let the work arrive first, and be explained second.

Culture should move at the very front. Some consensus, once settled, is rarely renewed; the same names, the same forms are still called ‘the best.’ But people are already looking past them — toward artists just now inventing their own language, and toward the next thing that has no name yet.

The senses are honestly unyielding. An eye that has seen something finer does not settle back below it. Taste grows in one direction only — upward. What PBG watches is up there too — the ground not yet agreed upon.

The Perfect OneThat heightened sense becomes, in the end, an eye that knows its own colour.

Good collecting is not owning many expensive works. It is recognising the one that belongs to you. That eye grows within the diversity of France.

Collecting is like having a single garment cut to your body. Not a closet crammed with similar clothes, but the one that fits you perfectly, found at last. You try again and again, set aside what isn't right, and finally know what is yours.

They say that as the tailor's shop disappeared, so did personal taste. Now there are only famous labels, and no clothes of one's own. And yet some still work to keep their own colour. That effort, I believe, is the path to becoming a collector.

The work and the collection are, in the end, the same thing: to look for a long time, to take away, and to keep near what finally refuses to leave you.— Young Chin · Director, PBG MARAIS