Seojung
Art presents Seong Joon Hong’s solo exhibition 《Where did it come from ? pt.1》 in Busan from
May 11, 2024. This is followed by 《Where did it come
from ? pt.2》 in Seoul, opening on May 17, with both
exhibitions running concurrently until June 28.
Continuing
his Layer series—through which he stages the canvas as a kind of screen—Seong
Joon Hong has sustained his practice by archiving countless choices,
divergences, and the fragments accumulated within them. As part of this ongoing
trajectory, the present exhibition brings together works that connect records
of urban landscapes captured by the artist, along with the time and space that
fill life itself, across the continuum of past, present, and future.
Within
unpredictable situations, Seong Joon Hong has continuously reflected on
questions that shift from moment to moment, contemplating where the varied
conclusions shaped by these reflections might ultimately lead. Although each
act of choice and practice seemed to pass through inflection points and take
detours, at some point he became convinced that they were, in fact, advancing
sequentially toward a single destination. This exhibition begins from imagining
how such an accumulation of thoughts might be materialized into form.
The
newly presented series manifests images such as “feathers,” “air,” and “soap
bubbles” as visual and tactile materials. This draws attention to the artist’s
approach of treating each work not as a final outcome, but as a “turning
point”—a moment of interim reflection. Imagining the various materials that
emerged differently depending on choices of theme, subject, technique, and
method of realization, as well as all the immaterial entities that were not
selected and thus discarded, the process of reviving them becomes the driving
force that propels the artist’s future work.
Freed
from the realm of sensations that can be touched by one’s fingertips, these
materials—now in a state of weightlessness within infinitely unfolding time and
space—drift and float throughout the exhibition space, representing invisible
and vanished thoughts. What once felt like opaque and heavy options, when
revisited now, appear transparent and light, freely floating and sometimes
disappearing altogether. With the question, “Was it the discarded thought that
was light, or was it myself?” the artist returns to the starting point and
poses the question anew.
One
section of the exhibition is filled with processes in which such questions
intertwine with the artist’s own responses. In particular, materials such as
silver-foil layers, aluminum, frames, canvas, leather, and lumps of paint
reveal the results of and reflections on temporality that the artist explored
throughout his practice. Seong Joon Hong has continually grappled with how to
think through ever-changing questions—what he thought and what he felt—and how
to express these inquiries pictorially. Reflecting on what materials shaped by
sensation might signify for the artist, what is transparent yet visible, soft
yet perceptible by hand, ultimately becomes an expression of “existence.”
This
exhibition was conceived with the hope of fostering dialogue between the artist
and the audience. Recalling how conversations with others can unexpectedly
clarify long-held contemplations, Seong Joon Hong approaches dialogue as a
means of finding oneself amid periods of deep introspection. Just as flowing
time cannot be stopped but can be recorded, this exhibition becomes a journey
of seeking clues by assembling letters addressed to recipients and stories cast
toward unspecified audiences.
