What the transposition into Hong’s media of choice subtracts in terms of documentary photorealism, it adds manifold in material significance. Embroidered images of flames, and the idea of a single moment given weight by the labor that goes into its representation, were also prominent in Shadow of Us (2016)—depicting candles left on the street in paper cups during another protest from 2013—and Burning With Triadic Harmony (2016)—in which silhouetted figures encircle a roaring fire of burning daljip (brushwood), representing an old Korean custom that celebrates the 15th day of the Lunar New Year. Below this second image, whose oversaturation means that the towering flame consists of just three predominant hues, is a simple set of white lines embroidered on black, representing the outlines of the three variously hot parts of the flame. This simplification, in conjunction with the suggestive but apt title, reduces the image to a ratio, and reveals an underlying harmony akin to that found in music, where three notes spaced at specific ratios harmonize to form a chord.

This kind of transposition—from an image to an underlying sonic implication—is where “The Moon’s Trick” came into its own. Collected under the title Prayers 1–40 (2017), throughout the exhibition were framed squares of cream-colored cotton on which are sewed minimalistic, linear forms in black—crude and almost cartoonish yet each carrying its own sense of harmony. Each of these “prayers” is a reduced pictorial fragment derived from archive photos of post-war South Korean cityscapes and the many protests that accompanied the country’s subsequent modernization, and they also represent what Hong calls “photo-scores.”