In The Penal Colony - by Franz Kafka

A European Visitor arrives to witness the execution of a soldier condemned to death. He has been invited by the New Commander of the Penal Colony, who has begun to question the method of punishment still in place from the former Commander's regime. The Visitor meets the Officer in charge of the execution, who is performing the final preparations on the machine.
The Officer describes the machine's three distinct components: the bed where the prisoner is laid, the draftsman which controls the writing of the harrow, and the harrow itself, with its teeth-like needles which inscribe the commandment that the prisoner has broken onto his body. The Officer then relates the condemned man's offense: insubordination. The Officer quotes his Old Commander's philosophy: "guilt is always beyond doubt." Thus, this man can be executed without a chance to defend himself. He explains how the condemned man is to experience his punishmentÑthe needles will etch for six hours onto his skin: "Honor Thy Superior." The condemned man is then brought to the machine, stripped, and placed onto the bed. As the harrow descends, a strap breaks and the machine stops.
The Officer begs the Visitor to give a positive report on the execution which would convince the New Commander of the efficacy and importance of this method of capital punishment. The Visitor replies that he cannot do this because he still opposes the procedure, and, in any case, he is to depart early the next day.
Suddenly, the Officer sets the condemned man free. He then presents the Visitor with a piece of paper and asks him to read it, but the Visitor cannot decipher the script. The Officer reads aloud "Be Thou Just," and then proceeds to take his fate into his own hands...

The Palace at 4 A.M - Alberto Giacometti

In 1933, Giacometti published a statement describing his artistic process, referring specifically to works like The Palace at 4 A.M. "For many years I have executed only sculptures that have presented themselves to my mind entirely completed. I have limited myself to reproducing them in space without changing anything, without asking myself what they could mean.... The attempts to which I have sometimes given way, of conscious realization of a picture or even a sculpture, have always failed." This work with its spindly wood scaffolding, sheet of glass, and delicate skeletons is a vertical, immaterial drawing in space.

What it that?

Born in Rumania, Constantin Brancusi first studied sculpture at the School of Arts and Crafts in Craiova (1894–98) and the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest (1898–1902). In 1904 he left Romania permanently, traveling through Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Zurich, and Basel before settling in Paris. There, he continued his training at the École des Beaux-Arts (1905–07), and his work of the period attracted the attention of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. About 1907 Brancusi began to work by direct carving as a means of distancing himself from Rodin's style. In Paris, Brancusi associated with many artists of the day, including Henri Rousseau, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani, and Marcel Duchamp. Brancusi showed five of his sculptures in the 1913 Armory Show in New York, and continued to exhibit widely throughout his life.

From the 1920s to the 1940s Brancusi was preoccupied by the theme of a bird in flight. He concentrated not on the physical attributes of the bird but on its movement. In "Bird in Space" wings and feathers are eliminated, the swell of the body is elongated, and the head and beak are reduced to a slanted oval plane. Balanced on a slender conical footing, the figure's upward thrust is unfettered. Brancusi's inspired abstraction realizes his stated intent to capture "the essence of flight." This particular conception of "Bird in Space" is the first in a series of seven sculptures carved from marble and nine cast in bronze, all of which were painstakingly smoothed and polished.

"Bird in Space" of 1923 was initially collected by Brancusi's great American patron John Quinn, who first saw the work in progress in the sculptor's Paris studio. Upon its completion in December 1923, Quinn had it shipped to New York, where nineteen years later, in 1942, it was acquired by Florene M. Schoenborn and her husband, Samuel A. Marx.
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Memories of Muder

In 1986 South Korea, a series of brutal sexual murders erupt in a rural, small-town corner of Gyeonggi province, rattling the sleepy community to its core. The local police department, headed in part by brash, impulsive Park Doo-Man (Kang-ho Song, J.S.A.) and his aggressive partner, does its best to investigate the crimes, but is totally unprepared to handle such foul murders.
Police work in small-town South Korea is not an exact science to say the least, and Park is used to getting things done the old-fashioned way. Intimidation, bribery, corruption, forced confessions, framings, and a good solid beating or two have been more than sufficient to handle any problem that has arisen in the small community...up until this point. But a serial killer? South Korea had never dealt with a crime of this magnitude. As much as they hate to admit it, Park and his partner are at a loss for how to proceed.
Enter Detective Seo Tae-Yoon. An experienced detective from Seoul, he ventures out into the boondocks to assist in the murder investigation, and immediately clashes with Park, who views Seo as an outsider invading his territory. Seo is calm, calculated, and analytical, totally at odds with Park's acerbic nature. Park and his partner continue to thuggishly interrogate the local townsmen, attempting to pin the crime on the local town dunce, while Seo formulates a plan to outthink the serial killer using logic and intuitive deduction. Both detectives soon come to blows over how to handle the case, each totally convinced of their superiority over the other...until the killer strikes again, and again.
Despite their best collective efforts to stop him, the killer seems consistently a good step ahead of the police. With a sickening realization, it occurs to the detectives that this particular killer might be out of both their leagues.