Installation view of 《Different Feelings》 © G Gallery

Hong Jungpyo’s solo exhibition 《Different Feelings》 explores nontraditional categories of sculpture, such as objects, architectural spaces, pedestals, and moldings, through sculptural methodologies.

A series of works employing processed, industrial materials and manufactured colors display patterns of regularity and irregularity, intersecting, colliding, and sometimes joining in a single direction to create a sense of flow within the sculptural language devised by the artist. Produced through repetitive processes, these works are mounted flat against walls, positioned upright on the floor, or installed in forms that negotiate between two and three dimensions.

Although his practice attempts to move beyond sculpture, it ultimately converges upon the medium, perhaps because his working process takes sculpture as its fundamental framework while continually reconsidering its conventions. When works embodying the processes of sculpture and anti-sculpture are presented in the exhibition space, they make an immediate, material impression through the pleasure derived from sharp edges, glossy surfaces, and vivid primary colors.

Regardless of the processes involved in their production, their forms remain emotionally restrained and can be understood as sculptures that traverse the boundaries between sculpture and object, and between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality.

I Don't Want the Bottom of the Object to Get Dirty conveys a sense of dynamic movement, as though the moldings forming a joined window frame were being dismantled. A surface that appears to have once formed the base of a pedestal is incorporated into the structure in an upright position.

Considering the longstanding relationship between sculpture and its pedestal, this can be seen as an attempt to redefine their respective positions, capturing a moment of tension arising from their reversal. The dynamic quality found in the work also emerges from linear elements intersecting irregularly at millimeter intervals, collisions between varying thicknesses, and connections brought together at precise angles. The ‘Loading in 9 Times’ series appears to be a study of this sculptural language, constructing structures along the x, y, and z axes through moldings of different thicknesses.

This series also evokes the structural framework of architectural windows, while its relatively small scale allows viewers to directly grasp the sculptural methodologies that characterize Hong’s broader practice. Lerberg and No Use, which transform the objecthood of everyday items, take the forms of functional objects—an IKEA shelving unit and a bent-pipe hanger, respectively—as their basic frameworks, altering their original functions.

Hidden Edge #34 reveals tectonic qualities, in which the manner of joining linear elements creates and defines spatial relationships. Clues to Hong’s pursuit of a new understanding of sculpture through his challenges to sculptural traditions can be found in the title of this exhibition.


Hong Jungpyo, No Use, 2024, Bent steel pipe hanger, acrylic, 160 x 92 x 100 cm © Hong Jungpyo

《Different Feelings》 seeks to embrace the discrepancy between the artist’s intentions, decisions, and actions aimed at arriving at a sculptural form during the creative process, and the ways in which viewers perceive and interpret the resulting work differently. The word “we” in the exhibition title seems to indirectly suggest that, despite these differences in perception, the artist as creator and the audience coexist within the system of art production.

In other words, Hong Jungpyo’s sculptures occupy the point where you and I, who perceive things differently, encounter one another. They can thus be understood not as self-contained works defined by their own completeness, but as works whose significance emerges through relationships with the outside world.

The attempt to position viewers alongside sculpture as a completed work seems particularly important, as viewers introduce variables through their diverse impressions and interpretations. As open variables, viewers enter the field of sculpture as individuals who offer alternative perspectives, intervening in the concepts of completed sculpture and traditional sculpture while opening gaps in the presumed finality of a finished work.

This approach also resonates with what Hong describes as the “unfinished journey” of his sculptural practice. By introducing an imaginary viewer into the field of sculpture and positioning sculpture between creator and viewer, Hong seeks to challenge the notion of completeness traditionally associated with the medium and expand its possibilities in alternative ways.

If we extend this idea imaginatively, the position of a hypothetical sculpture between viewer and creator functions as a trigger that brings to mind the circulation and institutional structures of art, including the production process in the studio, the circumstances in which artworks operate within exhibition spaces, and the systems through which their value is determined. Here, the viewer is not only an individual observing an artwork but may also function as a conceptual device that creates a new field of sculpture.

The work Different Feelings, which shares its title with the solo exhibition, unfolds the front and back of a three-dimensional, folding-screen-like structure, exposing both the finished front surface and the reverse side that would ordinarily require no attention. Within this binary structure, the back of the sculpture resembles a blueprint for the work, indicating its color values, the areas to be painted, and the direction in which it should be positioned.

Among the various markings on the reverse side, including “Hidden Edge,” “Front,” and “Do Not Touch This Side,” the phrase “Where You Are Looking” functions both as a self-referential joke about the finished front surface and as the artist’s invitation into the field of sculpture he seeks to define.

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