Believe me / Life Attitude 2017
Dimension variable
Aluminium, perforative metal sheet, oak wood, MDF, c-print on paper, c-print on film, ceramic, cement, wheat, cereal, rubber gloves, perspex, glass, fabric, chain, wire, rings, string, PVC, wheels, bubble wrap, synthetic crystals, peach-shaped handcream container, clips, hourglass, knitted pocket.
Believe Me / Life Attitude 2017 explores contemporary human and non-human subjectivity and the complex relationships that arise from their emotional fluctuations and social hierarchy. The modern development of technology, pathology and hygienic industry has caused growth in psychological and physical management (or manipulation), increasing the intimacy between human and non-human relationships. In particular, advanced practices such as medical assistant robots, a bot with multiple extended arms (‘tentacular appendages’) and multiple functions, enables it to extend beyond the limitations of human capabilities such as motion (speed, repetition), position, precision and even intellectual ability. The constellations and non-linear elements that make up this work are in constant relation to one another in different scales. They are incorporated to reimagine and recompose everyday situations of feeling vulnerable, fragile and threatened through mythological narratives and altered meaning. This invokes a collective confusion, plasticity, contemporary aesthetic, artificiality, natural and machinery relationship and therefore emphasises the social complexity and power relationships in play, to confuse reality through mimicry and joke. Individual materials are carefully placed temporarily in positions of suspension, leaning, covering and holding, bound up with one another. Some are vulnerably connected to or supporting the others that are over-weight and under pressure. Simultaneously, some materials are covered with soft fabric and bubble wrap to evoke precarity, weakness and emotional instability, carefulness, comfort and discomfort.
Vein ver.0.1: Orbital Transition (Working in progress). 2021
Jesmoite, scaffolding, chain, hoop anchor, air dry clay, aluminium wire, oyster shell
202 x 129 x 64 cm
Vein ver.0.1: Orbital Transition reveals a progressive body that is in a state in between emancipation and resistance as it traverses modes of living and non-living. This work is a continuation of the artist’s interrogation into Posthuman discourse, questioning the unknown tension between the planetary scale of contemporary phenomena and the mystery of the deep underground secret that has grown amidst technological advancement under the predicament of the human position. The work expresses resistance and dependency within the oscillating energy and spiritual capacity of spatial generation and invisible force. The artist creates an abstract motion and complex energy cycle through its corporeal body. The entanglement of the sculpture has been developed through the processes and conditions of suspension and tension which relying upon the natural force of gravity and material’s its own capacity. The work is situated in the mode of natural tension and morphogenesis from its materiality which are set in both liveliness and synthetic incubation.
Forest myth
Natural emergence : Deep roots 2020
124x112x35 cm
Jesmonite, Polystyrene, pine timber board, hinge, perforated stainless steel
Exploring sublunary temporal rhythms and the polyphonic patterns of Earth its in their forming and revolving. Invisible energy and synergy between matter and the mass. From the barren to the proliferation of existence as mystery, the work attempts to reveal patterns and forms that revolve and uncover modes of emergence.
Sympoiesis, a term developed by Donna Haraway, is defined as a collective entanglement that has a spatial and temporal quality in its mutual mode of relationship and inter-linking, and is never exhausted or reducible by a single action. A series of work Natural Emergence: deep roots explore the invisible energy that surges around living and non-living organisms. The work expresses growing pattern and reproduction, emergence and a flow. The invisible surge circling around, creates streams and spreads into atmosphere indivisible to naked human eyes. These unconscious traces and movements constantly accumulate and become sedimented leaving unexpected lines and forms that often come to form of a void, sinkhole, abyss or black hole. Unknown time and shimmer are frequent motifs in science fiction. I fabricate symptoms and diagnostic actions and create spiritual props that express the surging energy that appears in a natural and synthetic atmosphere. The work traverse barriers between nature, industry, myth and synthesis involving the growth of desire, virus and vitality, while they imitate and mimic one another. Natural emergence and technological negotiation are focal parts of the discourse in this long-term investigation, in which I continue to question the simultaneity, sympoiesis and symbiosis of milieu and nature, in relation to contemporary post-human discussion.
After life 2019. 125 x 40 x 40 cm. (sculpture on the left)
plywood, air-dry clay, fabric, expanding foam, artificial plant, aluminium wire, fake nail, table legs
The work After life is composed with collective objects that are mimicking and simulating the growing patterns of the natural life cycle. The work consists of domestic objects such as fake nails and plastic flowers which they are growing up from the barren stony stack that is being held up by modernist table legs. These carefully juxtaposed elements of heterogeneous bodies are composed to imitate creeping crawling critters that are desperately searching for a life.
Peculiar escape 2019. 130 x 106 x 60 cm (sculpture on the right)
styrofoam, dust brush, aluminium round bar, air-dry clay, wax, grout, feather, chain
Peculiar Escape is another heterogeneous creature that at first glance resembles a living organism or a myth maker. Juxtaposing heterogeneous objects using domestic products creating a gaze that are recognizable yet estranged from everyday experiences. Those arbitrary objects relocate the viewer from a mundane experience together with remoteness, generating new strangeness. The ambiguity of this object is oscillate between plant, animal, props or architecture and creates continuous interrogation into presence and potentiality.
Nest (infinite loop) 2021
Jesmonite, aluminium wire, air-dry clay, silicon, chain, net wire, mirror Perspex
68 x 60 x 60 cm
Vulnerability, liquidity, temporality and plasticity are represented with material states in the work Nest. Dissolution of the body creates a vulnerable position that is stuck in a state of infinite loop and reflection without knowing the way to escape. This precarious standing sculpture of real and virtual appearances are in a constant trembling mode and interrupted and confused by the reflection one and another. The confusion occurs from between those facing moment that presented here as drifting and fluid and mingled mode.
Swan 2021
42 x 72 x 63 cm
Jesmonite, pigment, aluminium wire, air-dry clay, faux fur, cable tie, copper pipe
The work Swan 2021 sits in a mode of transition, transformation and self-becoming. It depicts the durational process of a young swan growing into a mature adult. The transition of its grey feathers maturing into white is a progressive and nurturing transfiguration in its lives. However, this process is also undergo with process of self-struggle, striving and the resist of inner and exterior invisible tension before finally overcoming its own bodily and emotional self. Whilst spikes are growing outwards to protect and to guard themselves.
Inhale and Exhale 2019
Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition 2019, Coppenhagen
Aluminium steel plate, polyurethane sponge, acrylic liquid
60 x 225 x 125 cm
A black cube-shaped sponge, saturated with a significant amount of black liquid creating a firm, still, dense and consistent body, is situated in the centre of a reflective surface. This liquid holding body sustains the weight and tension between the eternal force of gravity and evaporation into the air surroundings of its periphery. The sponge’s porous and absorbent nature, holding the liquid within its body, distinguishes it from the shiny and gleaming, flat surface underneath. The query of mysterious darkness at the centre of the sponge cannot be revealed and is left to be unknown. The body of the sponge contains the potential to both release and retain even through its numerous entrances and exits. The deep blackness becomes a breathing machine that continuously interacts with the exterior and interior reciprocally. It is a query from the porous surface to the invisible centre of the unknown mass.
How to sense the invisible 2019
C-print on Aluminium Dibond, synthetic fabric, beaming tape, PVC sheet, spray paint, vinyl print, vase, curtain tie back with tassels.
Dimension variable
How to sense the invisible 2019 is a series in which I explore how different living and non-living species are interlinked and how they extend their bodily existence with others or in a variety of discursive modes. I have clustered various species that have figuratively evolved and reified the mutual conduits in their bodily, socially, biologically subject and have merged into something else. In contemporary subjectivity, multiple identities, systems, clones, species, conspiracies and magic often confuse us, and are played out in everyday life through public broadcast, religion, propaganda and many more. Taking transformation, morphology, fantasy and complex virtual and hybrid reality as contemporary forms of existence and discourse, I play with these multi-layers of heterogeneity, and surface tension as flattened objectives and an identity ontology. Images are sometimes more than reality, and are often more precise than the reality in states of material equilibrium.
A myriad of queries erupts in the vast space between the sun and the earth, triggering the emergence of new forces, on both a terrestrial and planetary scale.
Indistinguishable energies cascade from the sun, awakening earthly actants.
The ghosts of the sun reveal secrets, burn flesh and fractalize the spirit.
Amidst uncertain states of becoming, the earthly bounds have shifted and confused within elongated time - recognisable only in glimpses, in clouds of fluid and flame.
The ghosts sweep swarms of precarious and peculiar critters from the surface of the terranean stack, alerting, contaminating and camouflaging them.
This process develops from both peaceful and dangerous conditions.
Scratch the sun, the eyeballs and the blackhole to search the deep dusky underground secret roots and routes.
The trembling membrane of a thirsty ground attracts the desert where the only aim left is to become a life.
The fate of the earth is to be absorbed by the sun.
Aeon 2021
50 x 150 x 165 cm
aluminium sheet, shield, air cushion, oyster shell, styrofoam, bolt strap, bolt screw
Aeon is created with clustered thoughts of lifeless and inhuman relationships. Individual objects are juxtaposed neatly without recognisable relations. The individual objects in this work have fulfilled their original vocation; the shield, shell, air bubble cushion, belt and foam that are used to protect and guard the vulnerable of others. They were all created over time through compression; weaving, vacuum forming, layering and merging under the pressure of air, mineral, chemicals and natural resources with varying length of domestic and natural processing time. There are repetitive machinery act involved yet also the natural growing pattern through its accumulation and overcoming. The work indicates limitation and potential to whom were overcome the threshold of boundaries either natural or synthetic and its process interrogate to perfection and weakness simultaneously.
IF YOU ARE LUCKY YOU WILL SEE IT 2018
Touch me, remind me, who I am. Exhibition at SNEHTA Residency in Athens, curated by Evita Tsokanta
Styrofoam, printed fabric, vinyl print, water pipe, car spray paint, velvet, air-dry clay, copper ring, chain, rope, eyelet, beads, pin, fishing net
250 x 225 x 120 cm
IF YOU ARE LUCKY YOU WILL SEE IT (2018) explores an ontology of time and materiality through their latent simultaneity of past and future, within the present. The work was created during a residency, in the city of Athens, Greece. Seeing the historic city of ancient remains colliding with the surrounding domestic European tourism was a fascinating and obfuscating experience. The work builds upon the idea of the unknown flourishing time of the ancient Greek civilisation and the debris of the materials that are left creating a present that oscillate with extensive depth in scale and time. The plinth indicates the sublunary sphere from Greek mythology and is also a replication of the remains of an ancient agora, it represents the idea of the geocentric cosmos but also today’s monumental tourism industry. Within this work, an aeon of time embedded and imbedded as memory, history and harmony, circulates around and evolves through the present. These historic monuments interact constantly with visible and invisible environmental surroundings. The multi-layered historical narratives and fluctuation of time have become entangled and stratified onto the ground, re-creating a new version of the facade. The two wiggly hanging cocoons represent acanthus leaves from the Corinthian order of ancient Greek architecture, the most commonly ornate plant on the top of capitals. The work expresses the circuit systems of ecology, culture and social construction and natural emergence which are accumulated on the ground, perpetually merging and reshaping within their surroundings. The historic remains and residue leave traces that will transgress, mutate and evolve into geological and spherical realms.
Dune 2019
C-print on aluminium sheet, PVC hose, cable tie, clamp, metal bar, fake nail tips, ball chain.
200 x 140 x 100 cm.
Desert, where there was life before, not now, but there might be in the future. Where there is possibility, unknown future and embedded species that have not yet become.
Dune 2019, from the series of 'How to sense the invisible', presents images of the different living and non-living matter of existence, from a microscopic to a telescopic scale that stay in a flattened ontological mode but retain a state of fluidity. Scientific discoveries from Mars to the Tardigrade species transgress and exceed frontiers of spatial understanding and imagination. The work traverses the states of fluidity and solidity and represents the continuous modes of mutability and progresses that are often not recognised by the naked human eye. Dune represents the gradual uncertainty of the human position and the ever-expanding capacity of data, images, and information, that exist in a flattened status, in the modes of digitisation, pixelation, and mass production.
Birth and Grow 2018
140 x 54 x 42 cm
polystyrene, plaster band, metal liquid
Parlour Géométrique, Chiswick House and Garden, London
Numerous symptoms arise between the living and non-living (progressing body). A metallic creature lying on the ground obfuscates the surroundings by its contrasting temporality. Whether it is resting or crawling, whether it lost in place or appeared in the moment at birth. The work was presented as performance piece for the duration of a day in a public park. Remaining still yet appearing as a breathing machine that is constantly interacting with the shifting environment of its surroundings; people, children, dogs, ants, flies, dust, moisture, wind and the sun.
‘Birth and grow’ express the formation and deformation of life and energy cycles in their continuous, trans-variable and mutational conditions. The work explores the interlacing of sublunary metamorphosis and the omnivorous void (the invisible energy or the force of nothingness) at the point where vagaries and the transgression of matter become a vector of life. These cycles are often recognisable but rather unknown, and continue to exist in the mode of made and unmade, and in states of lively and inert. Through my practice, I consider environmental agencies, a rupture in scale, and intangible subjectivity, to recognise the natural energy of invisible surges and uncover a depth of mystery.
The epic 2014
Selected for Collier Bristow Graduate Award and Exhibition 2014.
expanded mesh, MDF, C-print, spray paint, eye mask, marshmallow, head band, neck mask, car bumper fragment, chocolate
dimension variable
The installation The Epic consists of five standing Nymph statues that are taken from a Baroque period building developed by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann and Balthasar Permoser 'Zwinger' in Dresden, Germany. It is ambiguous whether the statues of 'male' Nymphs found on the staircase are functional or aesthetical ornaments. Each half human and half plant character have a seductive pose which contrasts with their masculine bodily composition. Their mischievous facial expressions also appear to mock the viewer as they are presented in the installation at a human scale. The work aims to transgress the boundaries and barriers of desire, beauty and self-expression whilst presenting the vulnerability of the skin, fragility and weakness, they are simultaneously playful and comical. The boxes made of meshed metal with colour express the porous, openness and penetrability of their material states which at the same time cannot be traversed through.
Kyungmin Sophia Son