Originality & Identity

Sangwoo Yoo’s work begins with the question of how the senses of contemporary individuals become worn down and alienated. His early solo exhibition in Korea, 《Hidden, Covered, and Distorted》 (Gallery DOS, 2021), focused on reactivating vision and perception that have become desensitized through over-familiarity in daily life, exploring the question: “Can the visible lead us to what is invisible?” Works from this period stemmed from questions derived from the inner emptiness, futility, misunderstandings, and frictions the artist experienced during the pandemic.

He pays attention to the temporality of objects, the essential value of nature, and the subtle senses humans overlook in everyday life. Works such as Fragment of Green (2021) and the ‘Membrane’ series, which reveal the hidden substance beneath the surface of objects, can be read as attempts to restore perception and return the world to a state where it can be “felt” again. This moves beyond simple observation and toward recognizing and reconnecting gaps between things that have become “disconnected.”

In the ‘Portrait of Loss’ (2023–) series that unfolds after 2023, the focus becomes even clearer. By collecting discarded Christmas trees, flowers, and plants—natural objects that have been separated from their original temporality and pushed into a state of marginalization—and transforming them back into sensory forms, the process becomes both an experience of confronting loss and a ritualistic act of reviving ecological cycles. These works function as “a process of regenerating fragments of loss to recover new sensory possibilities.”

In his recent solo exhibition 《Where Memory Becomes the Earth》 (Kumho Museum of Art, 2025), he foregrounds the temporality, cyclicality, and ephemerality inherent in nature. Installations that gradually fade during the exhibition and return to the natural world afterward to become catalysts for new life embody a structure in which time flows, disappears, and is regenerated through art. Ultimately, Yoo’s practice centers on the key inquiry of “sensory regeneration and reconnection,” aiming to restore the relationship between marginalized nature and human beings.

Style & Contents

From his early works, Yoo adopts an analytical and experimental sculptural approach. In Fragment of Green, he combines leaves, objects, and single-channel video to create a laboratory-like structure, dismantling the external form of objects and revealing their deeper layers by leaving only minimal components. The ‘Membrane’ series directly exposes what lies beneath transparent surfaces, prompting active viewer engagement, while the ‘A Haewooso for the Wounded’ series constructs dreamlike spaces that embody an escape from modern temporality.

After 2023, ecological cycles and the temporality of materials become the core of his formal language. In the ‘Earth Casting’ (2023) series, he casts the soil of actual parks using biodegradable foam and wood, creates mobile forms, and installs them so they can be reabsorbed into the natural environment. Sotdae (2023), inspired by a traditional Korean ritual object, attaches horn speakers to wood and transmits real-time sound, presenting an installation in which natural objects and artificial technology coexist.

The ‘Portrait of Loss’ series becomes even more diverse in its formal development. In Portrait of Loss (candle) #1(2023), a candle made from the chlorophyll of a discarded Christmas tree emits scent while its body slowly disappears, functioning as a time-based sculpture. In Portrait of Loss (incense)(2023), a tree transformed into incense is burned and reduced to ash, while Portrait of Loss (dust) #1(2023) uses tree dust spread across the floor that disperses and moves with the footsteps of visitors. In this way, the process of material transformation itself becomes the central content that constructs the meaning and sensory experience of the work.

In recent works, video and participatory forms are combined. In Portrait of Loss (When the River Cradles Wishes)(2025) and To Fold, To Wish(2025), discarded plants are used to create paper on which images are printed or folded into boats and floated on rivers. These works demonstrate a media practice that moves across sculpture, installation, video, scent, and interaction, effectively revealing the cycles of time, matter, and nature.

Topography & Continuity

Yoo intersects ecological materiality with temporality. He explores how the loss and marginalization experienced by natural objects can be sensorially revived, examining how materials, senses, and the environment have become disconnected in contemporary society. This goes beyond simple material experimentation and forms his unique approach as “an art of sensory regeneration that reconnects what has been lost.” ‘Earth Casting’ and 〈Sotdae〉 expand the site where nature, technology, and environment meet, while the ‘Portrait of Loss’ series deepens the direction in which transformation, disappearance, and return of materials become the core meaning of the work.

By employing familiar everyday materials—scent, dust, light—that engage the full range of human senses, his work closely aligns with contemporary discourses on ecology, time, sensory experience, and the redefinition of the human–nature relationship. The expansiveness of the ‘Portrait of Loss’ series, demonstrated through international residencies and active exhibitions in the United States, suggests the potential for site-specific practices that respond to the natural and urban contexts of various cities around the world.