Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Seo has held solo exhibitions including 《Slough and Trajectory》 (Arcade Seoul, Seoul, 2025), 《Sections》 (Hall 1, Seoul, 2023), 《earcabinet》 (Mullae Art Space, Seoul, 2022), and 《EarTrain_Reverse》 (RASA, Seoul, 2021).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Seo also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Perigee Unfold 2025 《Don’t Be Hasty》 (Perigee Gallery, Seoul, 2025), 《Score for pieces of cork》 (AVP Lab, Seoul, 2025), 《The Ring of Saturn》 (Bucheon Art Bunker B39, Bucheon, 2024), 《Breathe in, Breathe out》 (Wooran Foundation, Seoul, 2024), 《Thick as Thieves》 (Faction, Seoul, 2023), and 《Hovering》 (2/W, Seoul, 2018).

Originality & Identity

Seo Minwoo’s practice begins from an understanding of sound not as a simple auditory stimulus, but as a material event that occurs between space, the body, and objects. He focuses on the vibrations, traces, and collisions that sound leaves as it passes through various media, examining listening as a process that unfolds continuously across time and space rather than being confined to a single moment. This perspective is clearly articulated in his first solo exhibition 《EarTrain_Reverse》(RASA, Seoul, 2021), which foregrounds a perceptual shift in how space is sensed and imagined through sound.

In the early ‘EarTrain’ works, Seo combines experiences of movement and listening to explore how sound constructs space. Works such as Eartrain 50-00, 50-08, 08-00(2021) emphasize sounds collected from specific locations to form an “auditory landscape,” while pieces like Traveler E&C(2021) attend to everyday noise and subtle sonic textures, focusing on sound as an event rather than as a carrier of narrative or emotion. During this period, sound functions as an index that reveals concrete situations and conditions.

In the solo exhibition 《earcabinet》(Mullae Art Space, Seoul, 2022), the artist questions the very notion of “perfect listening,” bringing forward the fact that sound is always accompanied by loss and distortion. Listening here shifts away from clarity and faithful transmission toward an experience shaped by absence and incompleteness. Sound is presented not as something that can be fully grasped, but as a phenomenon that resists total apprehension, prompting a reconfiguration of the conditions under which listening occurs.

In more recent works culminating in the exhibition 《Slough and Trajectory》(Arcade Seoul, Seoul, 2025), Seo expands his inquiry toward the residues and traces that remain after sound has passed. The structure connecting the album Slough and Trajectory: Spiral Horizontally World(2025), the performance Slough and Trajectory: Trajectories(2025), and the exhibition itself clarifies his approach to sound not as a finished output, but as an event that emerges, disappears, and leaves behind material traces. In this process, listening extends beyond the ear to become a temporal and spatial trajectory experienced through the entire body.

Style & Contents

In Seo Minwoo’s work, form does not function as a neutral device for delivering sound, but as an active element that transforms and reorganizes it. He treats speakers that he fabricates himself as “internal organs,” encasing them within sculptural skins to produce distinct forms. Works such as small rock Generator_Harsh(2023) reveal how sonic vibration collides with physical form through the material properties of stone, metal, and amplification systems.

Within the ‘EarTrain’ series, sound is organized as an environment rather than an isolated object. Sound-sculptures such as Travelogue E&C(2021) reshape sounds generated by the travelers into object-based forms, testing whether sound itself can possess a sculptural structure. Here, sound does not operate as representation, but as a newly constituted sonic object formed through its integration with material structures.

This line of experimentation expands to the scale of the exhibition space in 《Sections》(Hall 1, Seoul, 2023). Partitions constructed from wood, steel, and stone both contain sound and allow it to leak outward, revealing its unpredictable movement. The intermittent intrusion of noise from a neighboring dry ice factory further destabilizes the listening environment, producing a space in which intended and unintended sounds coexist.

In 《Slough and Trajectory》, form becomes increasingly restrained. No new sounds are produced; instead, the latex used in the performance is transferred directly into the exhibition space. Footprints, wrinkles, and pressure marks are presented as the results of sound, prompting reflection on listening even in the absence of audible sound. Here, form shifts from a device that represents sound to a structure that reveals the residue of events that have already occurred.

Topography & Continuity

Within the context of contemporary Korean art, Seo Minwoo occupies a distinctive position by approaching sound not as an extension of music, but as a sculptural practice. While his work traverses sound art, sculpture, installation, and performance, it does not settle into any single genre. Instead, it consistently interrogates the conditions of listening itself, treating sound as a structure that organizes space and the body rather than as an object of appreciation.

If his earlier works focused on the spatial arrangement and movement of sound, later projects increasingly foreground elements such as loss, defect, and residue. The “space of loss” articulated in 《earcabinet》, the unpredictable leakage explored in 《Sections》, and the post-sonic traces presented in 《Slough and Trajectory》 all belong to this trajectory. These shifts reflect not a change in thematic direction, but a sustained inquiry articulated through different formal strategies.

Seo’s practice avoids presenting closed or complete structures, instead actively embracing variables and contingencies that emerge on site. This approach renders listening not as a fixed experience, but as an event that differs each time it occurs. His stated interest in “affirming and coordinating flaws and conflicts” operates as a methodological principle that runs throughout his work.

Maintaining a consistent focus on the materiality of sound and the conditions of listening, Seo Minwoo has articulated these concerns in varied ways across exhibitions and projects. His attention to the emergence, loss, and residue of sound resists fixation on a single form, allowing his practice to adapt fluidly to different spatial and situational contexts. This accumulated body of work can be read as a sustained sculptural methodology for engaging sound, situating Seo Minwoo’s practice within an ongoing current of contemporary sound-based sculptural exploration.