Wallpaper can have a message, too.
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About a year ago, I came across a statement that has accompanied my thoughts pretty much daily ever since. I don’t remember the exact words, but the essence of it is:
‘Art without a message is nothing but wallpaper.’ (Father Bronques)
Or, in other words: If you don’t have to say anything in your art, you are simply creating interchangeable content that people won’t really care about.
It made sense to me and seemed to explain why I often felt indifferent about my own art. I realized I didn’t really know what my message was, and I had never taken the time to think about it.
I often hesitated to express myself, perhaps because I subconsciously believed I had nothing to say. Or maybe I just didn’t want to share? So I started searching for what it was. After I discovered what I wanted to share with the world, decision-making became easier in every aspect of my life.
Then, last week, I visited an exhibition about production design at the Korean Cultural Center that showed me a whole new perspective on art and messages—and wallpaper.
Shortly after I boarded the surprisingly crowded S-Bahn (it was 3 PM on a Thursday, and I couldn’t find a seat), it began to snow. The weather in Berlin had been quite unpredictable lately, swinging between nights filled with thick snowflakes and strong gusts of wind, beautiful sunny and cold days, and even mild, nearly early spring-like temperatures.
I got off at Potsdamer Platz and walked along the powdery white sidewalks, passing people who were admiring the enormous snowflakes slowly falling from the sky and taking photos. When I reached Leipziger Platz, I entered the Korean Cultural Center, grateful for a refuge from the cold.
The woman at the reception greeted me warmly. I said I wanted to visit the production design exhibition, and she pointed upwards without taking her eyes off her computer screen. Curiously, I climbed two flights of light wooden stairs that led me to the first floor of the center, where the exhibition was located.
I found myself in a spacious room, standing on the same light wood as the stairs. The room had large windows that extended from the floor to the ceiling, overlooking Leipziger Platz. I sat on the low windowsill to take in the wintry scenery. The trees in the square, still wrapped in Christmas lights, were becoming increasingly covered in snow. Besides two people walking their dogs, I didn’t see anyone else. It had become quite ungemütlich outside.
Inside, the only other people present (apart from me) were a young couple in their twenties. They stood quietly in one corner, examining the walls covered in text and images about the production design of recent award-winning Korean movies.
It was nearly silent. I could hear the subtle sound of traffic from the street crossing Leipziger Platz, along with soft Korean pop music coming from the ground floor. It reminded me of the Oldies playing in another room and it’s raining videos I used to play on YouTube almost religiously after going to bed several years ago. About a minute or two after I arrived, the couple left.
I got up from the windowsill and began to observe the walls, enjoying the peaceful solitude. The quiet was only disturbed by the squeaky noise made by the wet, worn-out soles of my Air Max 97 (definitely not the best choice for the day, which I would realize only later as I slipped and slid on the icy sidewalks on my way home).
When I examined the section dedicated to the movie Decision to Leave, my attention was drawn to two rectangles on the wall in shades of teal, blue, grey, and a hue somewhere between orange and red. The pattern reminded me of snow-covered mountains or a stormy sea.
The text below the colorful rectangles read:
‘One of the signatures of production designer Ryu Seong-Hee’s work is her innovative use of wallpaper design. In Seorae’s kitchen, the wallpaper serves as a reflective canvas for the emotions that permeate the film, flowing from the mountains to the sea. Its uniform patterns evoke the image of waves - whether of the mountains or the sea - and symbolize the vibrations and echoes of Seo-Rae and Hae-Joon’s recorded voices.’
I continued to walk along the walls, reading the descriptions and watching videos of production designers discussing their intentions, inspirations, and processes for conceptualizing and creating movie sets. I was particularly fascinated by the futuristic dystopian concept design of the movie Kill Boksoon, especially the restaurant located in an almost empty mall that was showcased.
At the far end of the room, I found myself in front of another colorful rectangle displaying a wallpaper design featured in the movie The Handmaiden. Like the one from Decision to Leave, it had shades of teal, blue, gray, and red-orange, along with some additional yellowish-beige tones.
The description above the rectangular snippet of wallpaper said:
‘Wallpaper of the Hedeko’s room - it applied William Morris’s patterns and was sensuously inspired by Art Nouveau or Art Deco styles, which subtly depicted female sexuality through plant motifs.’
After looking at all the different sections on the walls, I sat down again on the windowsill and looked down at Leipziger Platz. The snowfall had become even heavier, and the sidewalks, along with the grass in the square, were now covered by a thick layer of white. It was only then that I noticed I was sitting directly across from the Canadian embassy. A large Canadian flag was fluttering in the wind, surrounded by the falling snow, atop a building that reminded me of the ones I loved so much in downtown Toronto.
Just hours earlier, I had checked the weather in Toronto because a friend of mine recently flew to Vancouver and mentioned how rainy and wet it was there. In Toronto, it was -12 degrees at that moment, and I momentarily felt glad I had returned to Berlin. Now, as I sat there, I gazed at the Canadian flag in a snowstorm—it felt like I was in an alternate reality.
I let my thoughts drift as I looked out the window, still alone in the large room on the first floor of the Korean Cultural Center.
Each morning, after getting out of bed and meditating, I am currently drafting emails to project spaces in Berlin that I have found potentially interesting for hosting audiovisual listening sessions for 40 Nights in Toronto. Many of these spaces resemble the white cube aesthetic that allows the art presented to stand out without any distractions.
Looking back at my visits to various exhibitions over the past few months, I've noticed that I often find the white walls and emptiness of these spaces just as fascinating—sometimes even more so—than the art displayed within them. I realized I love visiting museums and galleries because I enjoy spending time in expansive, almost empty rooms.
During several of those visits, the art on display often felt secondary. For me, the true experience was the room itself. These rooms with nothing but white walls provide me with a sense of comfort—an escape from our overstimulating world.
Just as art without a message can feel like wallpaper, wallpaper can also be art that has a message. I can love subtle, ambient background music as a legitimate art form and still be convinced that meaningful art must have a message. What if the characteristics that make people consider it ‘just’ background music are the message?
As these thoughts crossed my mind, I glanced at the people in the offices behind the tall glass windows of the building next to the Canadian embassy. I typed a few sentences into my notes app and left the Korean Cultural Center. It was 4:23 PM.
This visit left me reflecting on the contradictions within myself. Solitude has a way of surfacing them, revealing parts of us that we might shy away from in the noise of daily life. Maybe that’s why many people avoid being alone—because it strips away external distractions and forces us to confront the parts of ourselves we might otherwise try to suppress.
But maybe our inner contradictions aren’t such a bad thing. Why are we so quick to dismiss them as something to fix or hide?
My experience at the Korean Cultural Center didn’t give me answers but a new perspective: to live fully is to live with contradictions—not despite them, but because of them.
Enjoy your day or night!
glg Soda Paapi