When I was young and visited museums, there were always dioramas of terrains and landmarks. These models, which showed scenes of daily life in the Joseon Dynasty or offered perspectives on mountains and cityscapes of particular regions, were among the highlights of a museum visit. I remember peering closely at the tiny figures, houses, and villages—small as a fingertip—then pointing them out to a friend, urging them to share in the discovery of these marvelous scenes. As time passed, such displays were gradually replaced by digital kiosks or media walls, where users can zoom in or obtain detailed information with the touch of a hand.

Though viewers cannot physically enter a diorama, their eyes must move actively and meticulously. To find enjoyment, one must adjust their own focus, scanning the scene broadly from afar and then narrowing in on the smallest detail. Some viewers move left to right in sequence, while others let their eyes wander wherever they fall. In contrast, digital screens no longer demand such active movement of the eyes. On a screen, it is not the eyes that move, but the hands. By clicking, swiping, or zooming to select desired content, the eyes merely accept what the hands deliver. In an era when more and more of life is mediated through the smartphone screen, it is the hands that are kept busy, while the eyes simply receive images at the pace of the fingers.

Looking at Jayoung Hong’s sculptures requires the same kind of active movement of the eyes as when viewing a diorama. I experienced this immediately when I first saw 12 Mountains 9 Stones 6 Liters of Water(2020). Blocked by a fence that prevented close approach, I had to trace the work only with my eyes: searching to see what floated on the flowing water, whether there were indeed twelve mountains, or what might be found in the gaps between the peaks. Viewers accustomed to moving around a work—or even entering inside it—found this inability to draw nearer or to look at the back of the work frustrating. Suppressing the urge to pinch and zoom with two fingers, we instead alternated between surveying from afar with the naked eye and peering closely through a telescope, eventually acclimating ourselves to the device the artist had arranged.

From the same exhibition, Peepject: Two Holes for Eyes x 3(2018–2020) directed the audience’s gaze even more explicitly. Looking through the two holes bored by the artist revealed fragments of outside scenery, images on screens, or letters of text. Only by persistent effort—peering hard and shifting the eyes cleverly—could one glimpse what lay behind. Bodily movement was of no use; only active motion of the eyes allowed access. Similarly, in Fantastic Rocks(2022), Hong introduced apertures again. Through rock-shaped openings, viewers saw the landscape beyond. These were frames that both restricted vision and simultaneously compelled more active visual movement, for when nothing is restricted, we are more likely to explore those very areas we might otherwise ignore.

Thus, Hong’s works prompt the eyes to move more vigorously than the body. Sometimes one must also adjust the body to align the gaze, but at the core is the active movement of the eyes. Does this mean that Hong’s practice retraces art history backwards—away from modernism’s great tradition of engaging the body and back toward a renewed ocularcentrism?

The new work Sansu Sculpture(2023), presented in this exhibition, transposes Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams into three-dimensional form. Hong first sculpted the large rock mountains of the painting in sand, then 3D scanned and printed them. She explained that her inspiration came from the East Asian concept of wayu (“wandering while lying down”), which underlies traditional landscape painting: though the body lies still, the mind roams freely in the spiritual space evoked by the painting.

The elongated landscapes of East Asian scroll painting are not composed from a single point perspective; rather, they gather multiple scenic impressions chosen by the artist into one view. In these hanging or handscrolls, viewers wander through the depicted mountains with their eyes, as if traveling through real terrain. Because the movement of the painter’s body is recorded in the process, the landscapes naturally encompass shifts in perspective that follow the path of the gaze. Unlike Western landscape painting, which often relied on linear perspective to converge upon a single viewpoint, East Asian landscapes contain multiple perspectives layered together, demanding both active visual mobility and mental engagement from the viewer. Travelers Among Mountains and Streams in particular is celebrated for its masterful integration of near, middle, and far views, each rendered with distinct vantage and subject.

Hong adopts this worldview to uncover new potentials in vision. Here, both the painter’s gaze—which selected and assembled the scenic fragments—and the viewer’s gaze—which wanders through them to form an individual journey—are present. In Sansu Sculpture, the two-dimensional painting becomes three-dimensional, and details that never existed in the original—its unseen sides, back surfaces, or the interiors of rocks—are imagined by the artist. Filling in these gaps, Hong reconstructs the landscape through careful looking, which is then retraced again by the eyes of the audience. Viewers scan the sculptural mountain’s surfaces, feeling with their eyes the smooth planes and dense ridges as if touching them—an embodied, tactile vision foreign to the Western ocularcentric tradition.

Water also plays a recurring role in Hong’s practice. Its flows embed time within her works while presenting provisional, ever-shifting landscapes. For instance, though A Piece of Ceiling(2022) may simply be described as birch plywood coated with wax, the work’s true material also includes the shimmering light reflected from the water in 12 Mountains 9 Stones 6 Liters of Water (8 Mountains and 6 Liters of Water)(2020/2022), installed on the floor below. The rippling reflection flickers across the ceiling piece, compelling the viewer to raise their gaze and trace the elusive, unreachable image with their eyes.

More dynamic movements of water appear in other works: the fountains of 12 Mountains 9 Stones 6 Liters of Water, Waterplace(2021), and Wall Fountain(2022) continually spout water, their vitality inviting close attention. In Sansu Sculpture, the form itself becomes enveloped in mist and water. Droplets splash onto the surface, mist whirls around it, and the static sculpture is transformed into a kinetic event. Viewers must peer through drifting vapor to discern the contours, their eyes tracing a landscape in flux.

This tactile visuality also characterizes her engagement with architectural ornament. Columns, murals, and rock pedestals from traditional contexts are reproduced in sculptural form. By extracting and reconfiguring fragments of elaborate decoration, Hong highlights details that might otherwise remain overlooked. In works such as Waterwall(2021), Pillar Head(2021), and Temple Facade(2021), architectural motifs are affixed to gallery walls like reliefs, forming new scenes. Although modeled after historical originals, they are remade in materials like sand mixed with wax or sponge covered in gesso, producing coarse textures that contrast with the originals’ polish. The resulting delicate yet rough surfaces emphasize vision’s tactile capacity.

In the current exhibition, Octagonal Rock Pedestal(2023), supporting Sansu Sculpture, is modeled after a stone base at Changgyeonggung’s Jagyeongjeon. In its original setting, it is a quotidian element beside a bench, easily ignored. Relocated into Hong’s constructed scene, it emerges as a focal point. Behind it, The Gate of Wind and Water(2023) spreads out like a folding screen, situating both pedestal and sculpture within a newly staged environment. Detached from their original contexts, these once-overlooked details command attentive looking within the artist’s constructed vision.

The new scenes that Hong constructs often imply a definitive “front” from which to view them. Standing before this orientation, the audience diligently traces the sculptures with their eyes. Yet in these latest works, the artist also strongly urges the viewer to move their bodies and explore the backs. Even as she suggests a direction for viewing, she simultaneously compels audiences to seek alternative vantage points. Having transformed a two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional Sansu Sculpture, Hong insists that it be viewed from multiple sides. What was once a fixed scene oriented to a single viewpoint is now dispersed into scenes requiring mobile, shifting perspectives. Her work, now configured with multiple directions of looking, gestures toward the future trajectories of her practice.

On the archive table of the exhibition 《Defragmentation》, small sculptural fragments from Hong’s working process were displayed. These pieces combined rough planes with smooth surfaces, gentle curves with sharp ridges, concave hollows with protruding edges. Even without touching them, one’s eyes instinctively wander along their valleys and peaks, visually groping their forms.

We live in an age where endless new content is mediated by digital media. Visual information overflows, but the eyes themselves are rarely required to actively seek, probe, or grasp. Everything is flattened on screens and consumed at a glance. In contrast, Hong’s sculptures demand a more proactive use of vision, urging viewers to trace and linger with their eyes.

Through this, her work resists static and flat modes of seeing, instead cultivating a dynamic, multi-dimensional gaze. By provoking viewers to “touch with their eyes,” Hong’s practice reinvigorates the act of looking as an embodied, exploratory experience.

References

• [비평] 눈으로 더듬는 조각-홍자영의 조각에 대하여
  [Critique] Tracing Sculpture with the Eyes—On the Sculpture of Jayoung Hong)