Cast Skin #4-2 - K-ARTIST

Cast Skin #4-2

2024
Polyurethane, zipper, wool, fabric, buckle
119 x 112 x 106 cm
About The Work

Hyojoo Jang explores the sensory differences felt between the inside and outside of boundaries through the physical form of sculpture. Focusing on the gap between the fictitious entities of the digital age and tangible reality, she visualizes a sense of tactility that is “visible yet untouchable” through the conjunction and juxtaposition of diverse materials.
 
Hyojoo Jang integrates the flat virtual world with the physical world by employing the principles of ready-made objects. She creates unfamiliar combinations from everyday materials, offering viewers an experience that is at once familiar and uncanny. This sensory experience evokes the similarity to encountering virtual images within our everyday reality. Jang shares this process of retracing such analogous sensations with her audience, proposing a new paradigm for sculpture

Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Solo exhibitions featuring Hyojoo Jang include 《Invisible to the Naked Eye》 (G Gallery, Seoul, 2024), 《Caw caw – Shooo – Ping!》 (SAGA, Seoul, 2022), and 《Crow! Crow! Crow!》 (GEDOK, Munich, 2021).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Jang has also participated in various group exhibition both domestically and internationally, including 《Tiere》 (Galerie Gruppe Motto, Hamburg, 2024), 《Center Shift》 (Total Museum, Seoul, 2023), 《DOOSAN Art Lab Exhibition 2023》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2023), 《Face_to_Face_to_Face 2021》 (Ulsan Art Museum, Ulsan, 2021), 《WESS Exhibition / Publication 2021》 (WESS, Seoul, 2021), 《Tacker》 (Galerie der Künstler, Munich, 2020), among others.

Residencies (Selected)

Jang has participated in residency programs including the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2025–2026) and Residency URRA (2024).

Collections (Selected)

Jang’s works are included in the collections of Ulsan Art Museum (Ulsan) and Artothek & Bildersaal (Munich).

Works of Art

Integrates the Flat Virtual World with the Physical World

Originality & Identity

Hyojoo Jang’s practice begins with an inquiry into the sensory gap between digital images and physical reality. In early works such as Panopticon(2015), she used 3D animation to construct three-dimensional forms, but soon came to focus on the fact that virtual forms lack materiality. This awareness led her to explore the recovery of physical substance and tactility, expanding into a reflection on the gap between the digital and the material, the visual and the tactile—ultimately deepening into a fundamental question about the medium of sculpture itself.

In works such as R.S. #1(2019), she visualizes the sensation of being “visible but untouchable” by experimentally juxtaposing and combining a wide range of materials—from traditional sculptural media to industrial products, manufactured objects, and natural elements. Particularly in the ‘R.S.’ (2019–2020) and ‘O.S.’ (2021) series, she explores how volume transforms under the natural physical condition of gravity and how these masses form a dynamic relationship with the surrounding space, emphasizing the reality of sensation.

In Crow! Crow! Crow! #1-2 (2021), she uses the balcony as a site to evoke the ambiguity of everyday boundaries—between inside and outside, interior and exterior—through the language of tactility. The latex surface of the crow sculptures blurs the boundary between interior and exterior, and through its resemblance to human skin, evokes both psychological distance and sensory intimacy, generating a complex emotional charge.

In her recent solo exhibition 《Invisible to the Naked Eye》(G Gallery, 2024), she directly engages with the gap between the immateriality of digital images and the human instinct to physically touch them. As shown in the Cast Skin (2023–2024) series, she sculpts this gap by employing thin membranes that both reveal and restrict access—materializing the absence and desire for tactility embedded within contemporary visual culture.

Style & Contents

Jang’s sculpture unfolds through a process of material experimentation that dismantles the boundary between the material and the immaterial. In works such as R.S. #2-2(2020), she combines sponge, stainless steel, and fake fur to subvert traditional notions of sculptural materials and establish a new sculptural language that makes invisible sensations visible. Her approach traverses the realms of traditional sculpture, craft, and everyday objects, presenting new layers of sensory experience through the physical and tactile interaction between materials.

Latex plays a central role in Jang’s work. In O.S. #6(2021), 〈Crow! Crow! Crow! #1-2〉(2021), and Cast Skin #1(2023), latex repeatedly appears as a medium that, with its skin-like texture, functions as a device for inverting the inside and outside of sculpture. Its thin and flexible nature simultaneously conceals and exposes the interior, visually dismantling the boundary between surface and structural depth.

In the exhibition 《Invisible to the Naked Eye》, Jang juxtaposes not only latex but also silicone, wool, fabric, zippers, and buckles. Cast Skin #4-2(2024) embodies a state where the interior is opened yet inaccessible, exposing the tension between sensory illusion and material substance. While viewers can sense the presence of the inner material, they cannot physically access it—positioning the work on the boundary between image and matter.

Her work also extends to spatial installations. In the ‘O.S.’ series, the way the mass spreads on the floor under gravity or is suspended by chains redefines sculpture not as a self-contained object, but as something that forms a tense relationship with space. This reflects a new tendency in contemporary sculpture that integrates dynamicity and site-specificity.

Topography & Continuity

Hyojoo Jang has built a sculptural language that resists the loss of tactility and materiality in an era dominated by digital imagery. Based on the concept of “material play,” she continues to combine and juxtapose nontraditional materials in a way that destabilizes the binaries of vision and touch, inside and outside, reality and virtuality. Her tactile strategy of transforming latex and silicone into sculptural skin has positioned her work at a distinct and original point in contemporary sculpture.

While her early practice explored the formation of virtual images, she has since transitioned to physical matter, intensifying her sculptural inquiry into the ontology of the medium. Her repeated engagement with concepts such as gravity, surface, boundary, cross-section, and interior reveals her ongoing interest in translating invisible sensations into physical form.

Her work has been exhibited not only in Korea but also in Germany, France, and Argentina, garnering attention as a case that proposes new directions for contemporary sculpture. Through exhibitions such as 《Crow! Crow! Crow!》(GEDOK, 2021), 《Center Shift》(Total Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023), and 《Invisible to the Naked Eye》, Jang has steadily expanded the reach of her sensory sculptural language within the domestic and international art scenes.

Looking ahead, Jang will continue to explore the conflict between the fictive nature of digital images and the sensory reality of the body—giving material interpretation to immaterial sensations through the medium of sculpture. Her work, which visualizes the dissonance between digital and physical realities, is poised to evolve further on a global stage.

Works of Art

Integrates the Flat Virtual World with the Physical World

Articles

Exhibitions

Activities