Installation view of 《Hidden, Covered, and Distorted》 (Gallery DOS, 2021) ©Sangwoo Yoo

The Shape of Breath

Despite the increasingly complex and refined nature of language, people living in contemporary society remain disconnected and often misunderstand one another. Like any physical tool, language is used according to the user’s intention. It can become a link for harmony or a seed for conflict.

Yet, despite the stability granted by shared symbols, language retains an indefinable depth that cannot be fully explained. Sangwoo Yoo questions how the thin, transparent layers of culture and subjectivity inscribed on people’s bodies—often without their awareness—distort the shape of emotionless linguistic signs and lead to unpredictable outcomes.

The moment thought begins with the acquisition of speech, it seeks reasons for instinctive desires and casts its own dice toward direction. Even with one’s mouth closed, an inner voice echoes in the mind; even with eyes shut, experiences reappear. These sensations are edited and reinterpreted within the language one has learned. Records considered “objective” are also distorted through language, distancing themselves from the original events.

Across Yoo’s works, some form of “shell” is always present. While the thin membranes in his pieces may appear to resemble the forms beneath them, it remains unclear whether the artist actually coated the objects. The shells he adds may obscure the essence behind the veil, or conversely, serve as a provocative device that draws attention to trivial objects otherwise overlooked.


Sangwoo Yoo, Fragment of Green, 2021, Leaf, objects, single-channel video, Dimensions variable ©Sangwoo Yoo

At times, the shell itself becomes the essence. Despite its fragility, it absorbs external influences. In such cases, what fills the interior distorts the original form, becoming a precarious and deceptive measure of interpretation. Through works resembling laboratory apparatuses, the artist encounters the multiple faces of language embedded in the forms he constructs and the processes that generate them. The results that emerge through these devices are ambiguous—whether they are purified states filtered through refinement or turbid residues tinted by the apparatus itself. Yet, like a substance flowing through the bloodstream and altering vision, language permeates perception.

The dark stains on the surface of his works appear as deliberate marks or forms. Depending on perspective, the viewer may interpret them as damaged language—ink particles disrupted by liquid once adhered to paper. If one seeks familiar shapes to navigate the confusion of encountering the unfamiliar, the marks may represent an unknown language yet to be learned. The liquid that transforms letters into stains functions, outside the artist’s control, as both a flaw and an external disruption of essence. Paradoxically, however, it is language itself—this staining liquid—that distorts viewers’ judgments and thoughts about the work.


Installation view of 《Hidden, Covered, and Distorted》 (Gallery DOS, 2021) ©Sangwoo Yoo

The brief process through which a viewer observes and interprets a work resembles the moment a drop of water falls and leaves a faint stain. The outcome that emerges through the filter of thought may become purity or residue for trivial and unexpected reasons.

The shallow marks that seem destined to disappear soon acquire unforeseen colors and shapes, influenced by ambient temperature, dust, and other quiet elements that defy calculated prediction. Through Yoo’s experiments, we are prompted to reconsider what we have been mixing into language and how we have been using it.

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