Installation view of 《The Other Self》 © Ilmin Museum of Art

To put it boldly, everything is “sculpture.” If sculpture is defined as a mass possessing form and materiality within three-dimensional space, then not only various artistic genres—such as painting, photography, film, and performance—but even everyday objects can (with some exaggeration) be considered “sculpture.” Art critic Rosalind Krauss famously described this expanded nature of sculpture by stating that the term/genre of sculpture has been “pulled and stretched.”²

Nevertheless, what, then, is “sculpture”? Perhaps the question we must pose regarding this pulled and stretched sculpture is not simply “What is sculpture?” but rather one that focuses more on the ambiguous “expandability” of sculpture itself. In other words, beyond the notion of a “mass,” should we not consider continuous “expansion” itself as one of sculpture’s core values? By analyzing how the infinitely expanding sculptural worlds of two sculptors intersect and diverge in the two-person exhibition 《The Other Self》 by Kwon Osang and Haneyl Choi, held at the Ilmin Museum of Art, this essay seeks to reflect on the elusive and challenging term/genre of “sculpture.”

“The Unbearable Heaviness,” which is also the title of Kwon Osang’s 1998 work, is one of the key terms through which one can enter the expanding sculptural worlds of both Kwon Osang and Haneyl Choi.³ Located in the lobby of the Ilmin Museum of Art, Kwon Osang’s New Structure(2022) is part of his ‘New Structure’ series. Geometric forms and everyday objects resembling campfires are UV-printed onto flat birch plywood panels and propped upright on the floor.

The ‘New Structure’ series is an extension and transformation of ‘The Flat’ series, in which advertisement images of watches, cosmetics, and jewelry from magazines are printed, stood upright to create a kind of still-life sculpture, and then returned once again to the flat surface of photography.⁴ In ‘New Structure,’ flat images are brought directly into three-dimensional space and utilized as architectural elements.

Influenced by sculptor Alexander Calder’s ‘stabiles’—monumental sculptures in bronze and steel that replaced the movement of mobiles in the 1930s–40s with curves—Kwon Osang’s ‘New Structure’ series sheds weight while harmonizing heterogeneous elements and objects with the surrounding scenery, thereby constructing a new environment.⁵

The New Structure panel located at the exhibition entrance is a thin wall punctured with abstract patterns, made from the leftover birch plywood after cutting out components of the 2022 ‘New Structure’ works shown at Ilmin. By presenting not only lightness but also void itself as sculpture, Kwon Osang transforms the exhibition views framed through these holes—each shifting with the viewer’s position—into possibilities for new environments and new dialogues.

Although it is the largest work in the exhibition, Haneyl Choi’s Become a kenta(2022) is likewise light. This abstract black sculpture evokes both the Japanese word ‘kenta’, meaning large and healthy, and the Centaur (Centaurus) of Greco-Roman mythology, known for its powerful body combining a human upper half and a horse’s lower half. The work was created by the artist tearing away chunks by hand from a rectangular block of sponge.

Firm yet soft, the sculpture gathers together remnants of the sponge’s original right-angled form and the traces of what has been torn away to create a new figure. While both the material and the method of carving converge on “lightness,” the artist’s labor, action, and performance embedded in the making process, along with the rough yet soft surface and subtle sheen of the material, produce “material traces” that are anything but light.⁶ To borrow art historian Amelia Jones’s eloquent phrasing, these “material traces,” which evoke a sense of “having been made” through the coupling of action and materiality, “continue to affect the viewer’s body and senses, provoking a desire to respond,” and offer a powerful experience.⁷

Suspended from the ceiling at the far end of the gallery, Haneyl Choi’s Booger(2022) more aggressively strips away the “unbearable heaviness.” This abstract sculpture—one yet whole, and whole yet one—retains the bumpy skin of Styrofoam coated in dark gray urethane paint and slowly moves in the air, casting multiple shadows. It produces both sensory engagement and tension, while its playful title translates to “the protagonist’s booger.” When viewers scan a QR code, augmented reality technology fills the gallery with countless nasal secretions. The sculpture that can be physically touched remains one and whole until the QR code is scanned; afterward, it multiplies alongside numerous immaterial sculptures, becoming one within the whole.

The “expandability” evident in the sculptures of both artists can be connected to recent discussions on “material agency.”⁸ While Kwon Osang’s sculptural practice, developed alongside photography, has brought thinness, flatness, and even void into the realm of sculpture, Haneyl Choi presents tearing as a sculptural method and immateriality as a sculptural condition through “agents” such as sponge, Styrofoam, and smartphone applications.

Another abstract sculpture by Haneyl Choi that strongly asserts physical sensation, Always reboot: Ghost(2022; reprinted), was 3D-printed and coated in white urethane paint. Installed as if leaning against the wall in the shape of a folding window frame, the sculpture is accompanied by a QR code. When scanned, another similarly shaped but darker abstract sculpture appears in the exhibition space through augmented reality.

As its title suggests, this sculpture is constantly being reborn. In 2019 at Samillo Warehouse Theater, a work titled A T-shirt is the most simple way to express an opinion appeared as an abstract form holding a T-shirt and umbrella like a human body. The following year at Ilwoo Space, it was reborn as Stretch, revealing only a bumpy skin surface.

Earlier this year at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, a work with the same title appeared as a digital form on a screen, resembling an X-ray image or an undying ghost.⁹ Accumulating the layered histories of sculptures shown across different times and places—and destined to be reborn endlessly in new contexts through viewers’ smartphones—this sculpture exists simultaneously in the past, present, and future, continuously expanding.

This constant “collecting” or “accumulation” also runs through the sculptural worlds of both artists. Kwon Osang’s Three Piece Reclining Figure(2022) is a photo-sculpture composed of thousands of images of Haneyl Choi taken by Kwon himself. Loosely referencing Henry Moore’s reclining figures inspired by people sheltering during World War II air raids, the sculpture combines multifocal and perspective-driven viewpoints to emphasize a muscular body adorned with tattoos of apples, trees, and fish.¹⁰ The three seemingly disconnected body-masses are joined atop a pedestal to form a single continuous body—the pedestal itself also being part of the photo-sculpture.

This sculpture contains not only a dialogue between Kwon Osang and twentieth-century sculptor Henry Moore, but also Kwon Osang’s own sculptural history. Having evolved from hollow photo-sculptures in the 1990s to forms built with Isoping (reinforced Styrofoam) covered in photographs, Kwon recently introduced another shift in how the photographic surface is finished.¹¹

Whereas in the 2010s the surfaces were coated with glossy epoxy to emphasize photographic sheen, more recent works employ matte epoxy, evoking traditional materials such as wood or paper.¹² The sculpture shown at Ilmin likewise features a photo-based surface finished with matte epoxy. Kwon Osang’s sculpture continues to transform from its interior to its exterior.

Nearby, Haneyl Choi’s Old?(2022) initially appears to be a smooth abstract sculpture made from a traditional material—wood—but is in fact a horizontally placed work created by 3D-printing Styrofoam and coating it with steel paint. Along with other works in the exhibition, this sculpture initiates material dialogues among multiple substances. Choi’s sculptures also defy gravity by floating freely in the air or positioning themselves diagonally, vertically, or horizontally, constantly seeking new transformations.

At times, the sculptural histories of the two artists intersect directly. Haneyl Choi’s Rank(2022), placed at the center of the gallery, is a 3D print created by scanning Kwon Osang’s work. Figures from Kwon’s photo-sculptures are transformed into data and reemerge as abstract sculptures in Choi’s style; placed alongside Kwon’s works, they subtly suggest a sculptural dialogue.

Kwon Osang continues this exchange in The Three Shades(2022), positioned near the entrance, by using an abstract sculpture given to him by Choi as a support and covering its surface with photographs of wrinkled sphynx cat skin. Though differing in surface and pose, its form closely resembles Choi’s Old?.

Through these exchanges—moving between figuration and abstraction, emitting diverse material and immaterial textures, and invoking personal and historical references—the two artists weave a network of times. Within their light sculptures, innumerable historical layers accumulate. While they at times resemble one another through mutual appropriation, their sculptural worlds continually diverge through individual reinterpretation. The sculptural dialogue unfolding in the exhibition thus becomes an infinitely branching, ever-evolving history of sculpture.

One of the key themes in the Korean art world this year has been sculpture. Amid numerous exhibitions that spotlight mythical historical figures or simply enumerate contemporary sculptors, 《The Other Self》 distinguishes itself by beginning with material and immaterial dialogue between individual sculptors and expanding this into a sculptural-historical conversation.

Following the sculptures through the exhibition allows viewers to observe what the two expanding sculptural worlds share and where they diverge—that is, which spacetimes they do and do not share. This becomes especially evident in the continuous “expansion” of sculpture achieved through subtraction and addition by both artists. In an era when one could claim that everything is sculpture, the exhibition painstakingly revisits the question of what sculpture is.


 
1. The title of this essay is adapted from Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941).
2. Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 1985), 276.
3. Kwon Osang, The Unbearable Heaviness(1999), artist website, https://osang.net/portfolio/1999-underable-heaviness.
4. “Kwon Osang,” Arario Gallery, https://www.arariogallery.com/ko/artists/119-gwon-osang/.
5. See note 4.
6. On material traces, see Amelia Jones, “Material Traces: Performativity, Artistic ‘Work,’ and New Concepts of Agency,” TDR/The Drama Review 59, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 18–35, https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00494.
7. Ibid., 20.
8. A discourse—including theories by Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett—that considers objects as agents comparable to human subjects, examining how objects influence human actions to discuss new socio-political structures.
9. Storage × Haneyl Choi, Stretch) [2019 (reproduced 2022)], artist website, https://www.choihaneyl.com/mocabusan; Haneyl Choi, Stretch, 2019, artist website, https://www.choihaneyl.com/ilwoospace; Haneyl Choi, A T-shirt is the most simple way to express an opinion), 2019, artist website, https://www.choihaneyl.com/.
10. On the reclining figure series, see “Everyday Objects in the Sculptural Practice of Kwon Osang,” Naver Design Press, October 15, 2021, https://post.naver.com/viewer/postView.naver?volumeNo=32560031&memberNo=36301288.
11. On Kwon Osang’s “deodorant-type” sculptures, see “Kwon Osang,” Arario Gallery, https://www.arariogallery.com/ko/artists/119-gwon-osang/biography/.
12. On the matte surfaces of Kwon Osang’s sculptures, see “[Critic Lee Moon-jung’s The Gallery (75): Sculptor Kwon Osang’s ‘Sequence of Sculpture’] Expanding the Experimental Nature of Photo Sculpture after COVID-19,” Cultural Economy, September 14, 2021, https://m.weekly.cnbnews.com/m/m_article.html?no=140204.

References