There is something so critical and yet so ridiculous about sculpture

Artist Seoyoung Chung: The South Korean sculptor creates idiosyncratic objects filled with tension

Harry CH Choi

AUGUST 31 2022

“I’m aware that I’m not supposed to have favourites,” says Seoyoung Chung, “but ‘The Time is Now’ is one of those works that is closest to my heart, even though it didn’t get much critical attention. So I just let it be. What could I do?” The South Korean artist is referring to her 2012 sculpture, which captures the ways in which her work is as much about time as it is about matter. Central to her practice are moments in which everyday objects such as carpet, plastic vases, sponges and styrofoam are transformed into a work of art after a lengthy process of what she refers to as “negotiations” — both deliberate and inadvertent moves. “Sometimes, the process of creating sculpture is just like a game of word chain,” she says, “where one thing leads to the other, and I have little control over what comes out of it. “I was repainting this grey steel desk to use it as a part of my sculpture, and I knocked it over by accident, quite stupidly so,” she says on a Zoom call from her home in Seoul, her severe bob haircut and metal-frame glasses balanced by her candid humour. “It fell on to the floor with a huge bang, and that was when I found these two weird holes on its surface.” So she filled in the holes with snug wooden blocks, placed a sheet of glass on top and freestanding V-shaped wooden legs below, then stabilised the whole thing with thin scraps of wood underneath. The result is an arrangement of inconspicuous items now imbued with idiosyncratic tension. Like many of her works, the sculpture removes functionality and symbolism from its constituent parts, pivoting them against why they’re supposed to exist.

The tension within “The Time is Now” will be palpable as part of Chung’s largest solo presentation to date, organised by the Seoul Museum of Art and opening on September 1. Entitled What I Saw Today, the exhibition marks a rare occasion to see works that span her 30-year career. Chung came of age in the late 1990s, after completing her studies at Seoul National University and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. “Throughout my studies in South Korea and Germany, I had little guidance. I went to see shows with my peers and had intense conversations with my professors intermittently, but most of the time, I was sitting alone in the studio, just reading and thinking, really.” Soon after returning to Seoul, she was associated by critics with artists such as Beom Kim and Sora Kim, a loose group of experimental voices who prompted a turn to a conceptual language in contemporary Korean art. 

“It’s a bit misleading, though, this idea of Korean artists of my generation continuing the legacy of conceptual art,” she says. “I’m not a conceptual artist.” Indeed, she is quite unlike the leading figures of the 1960s movement such as Sol LeWitt, who prioritised the idea behind the work of art over its execution. “A lot of what I make is personal, and on top of it all, I like working with materials and making things with my hands!” Such was the case for “Lookout” (1999), which will also feature in the SeMA presentation - a wooden reconstruction of a humble observation desk, which the artist encountered in a postcard sent by a friend. “It may be that my work seemed to have borrowed from the minimalist aesthetics of conceptual art, but my work was, and still is, focused on the question of sculpture.

“I somehow believe that through sculpture, we can trace all kinds of human behaviour throughout centuries, whether they be cultural or social . . . It provides a place from which we can remember these ideas,” says Chung. “There is something so comprehensive, so critical and yet simultaneously so ridiculous about the medium.” Thus, despite slight excursions into photography, performance and video, sculpture has remained her central language.

The presentation of discordant or even conflicting ideas in her works is what Chung imagines in What I Saw Today. “It’s kind of a retrospective, but it is also not,” she says wryly, “because I would hate to historicise myself at this point in time.” Rather than present a linear development of the artist’s practice, the exhibition will serve as one sweeping installation, where works from the past two years are shown adjacent to her earlier pieces. “Much of the installation process will be spent on finding the right push and pull, to transform the space into a setting that is uniquely activated by the particular arrangement of works. “It’s a challenge, really, like every installation,” Chung says. “But with this show, I would like to have an occasion to encounter the problems that await my life as an artist.” Even while looking back into the past, what concerns her is the present and the infinite possibilities embedded within it. “You know, some people say that objects will disappear and are already disappearing. And I agree. It’s quite obvious that they will, as it looks like us humans and the Earth will as well. But since no one knows when that would be, we better focus on the present.” For Chung, the time is always now. 

 ‘What I Saw Today’ runs to November 13, sema.seoul.go.kr

https://www.ft.com/content/b31e3b39-f811-44eb-a581-8b3b4885fb52