Collected image pieces – Only mountains - K-ARTIST

Collected image pieces – Only mountains

2023
Ceramics, resin, paper, wire, epoxy
25 x 26 x 22 cm
About The Work

Eum Kixung has developed a sculptural practice that translates the inner states revealed when personal memories and sensory experiences collide with physical boundaries into a distinct visual language. 

In particular, he explores the sensations and traces left behind among objects and places that have been excluded, abandoned, or are disappearing within imperfect spaces—such as redevelopment zones, sites awaiting demolition, old urban districts, and marginal areas of the city. Through processes of deconstruction and restoration, he investigates what remains in the wake of transformation and loss.

Centered on ceramics, Eum Kixung’s practice freely combines materials such as household waste, Styrofoam, stainless steel, synthetic resin, toys, neon, gold and silver, digital ceramic decals, resin, paper, wire, and epoxy. Rather than limiting ceramics to the realm of functional craft or material-based form, Eum employs the medium as an expanded language through which to explore the city, objects, memory, and identity.

In his work, ceramics become a vehicle for embodying discarded objects, urban ruins, traces of redevelopment, and the sensations of migration and hybridity.

Working along this blurred and unstable threshold, Eum traces unarticulated sensations and the quiet voices of things on the verge of disappearance. His practice unfolds as a material monument to the vanishing and as a sculptural act of resistance against forgetting.

In turn, his works invite viewers to continually ask what is disappearing and what is being newly formed within the ambiguous processes through which physical and conceptual boundaries dissolve.

Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Eum has held solo exhibitions including 《Takvonsuzip Project 01 – Site Records》 (Buyeon, Busan, 2026), 《Afterimages of Blurred Boundaries》 (Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2025), 《Incomplete Harmony》 (Art Soombi Center, Seoul, 2021), and 《Unbalanced Harmony》 (Marunuma Art-park, Asaka, Japan, 2019).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Eum has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Evidence from the Field: Three Tenses》 (Space Imsi, Incheon, 2026), 《2025 Platform Artists: 11 Words》 (Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2025), 《Marunuma Art-Park Artist in Residency Exchange Exhibition Between Korean and Japanese Artists》 (Korean Cultural Center Korean Embassy in Japan, Tokyo, 2024), 《Capturing Everyday Life》 (Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Gimhae, 2023), and 《The Window of My Room》 (KCDF Window Gallery, Seoul, 2022).

Residencies (Selected)

Eum has also participated as a resident artist in residency programs at Incheon Art Platform (Incheon, 2025), Chuncheon Art Village (Chuncheon, 2024), Clayarch Gimhae Museum (Gimhae, 2023), and Marunuma Art-park (Asaka, Japan, 2019).

Works of Art

A Material Monument to the Vanishing

Originality & Identity

Eum Kixung has translated into sculptural language the sensations that remain in incomplete images, objects, and places. In his early work, the artist collected discarded furniture, vintage objects, and everyday waste from areas such as Usadan-gil and antique streets in Itaewon, combining them with ceramics.

His first solo exhibition 《An Artist’s Living room》(Hart Gallery, 2019) transformed a small exhibition space into something resembling the artist’s studio and living room. Through works such as Hommage to PAIK(2019) and The head(2019), Eum created a private yet unfamiliar space where ceramics, video, lighting, and collected objects were mixed together.

In the works from this period, discarded objects function not simply as materials, but as traces of taste, memory, and emotion that remain even after their original use has been lost.
 
In his 2021 solo exhibition 《Incomplete Harmony》(Art Soombi Center), this sensibility expanded into a more active sculptural experiment. Through ceramic furniture, mask-inspired objects, and three-dimensional sculptures combining Styrofoam and ceramics, Eum moves across the boundaries between art and use, traditional ceramics and popular culture, the old and the new.

The work TERRIBLE Hybrid(2021) reveals the artist’s attitude toward his own practice as a “terrible hybrid,” while KAT(2021) combines the weight of ceramics and the gloss of glaze with the lightness and volume of Styrofoam, showing how familiar images can be transformed into unfamiliar sculptural forms.

Emerging from the multicultural landscape of Itaewon and discarded objects, his work can be understood as a way of turning an “indefinable identity” into sculptural energy.
 
After 2025, Eum’s focus shifted from the hybridity of objects to the boundaries of the city and the disappearance of place. 《Afterimages of Blurred Boundaries》(Incheon Art Platform, 2025) deals with fragments of time and physical afterimages sensed in Incheon’s old downtown, redevelopment zones, and sites scheduled for demolition.

Ruined Civilization – Hannam District 3(2025), The Fantasy of Songwol-dong(2025), Cracked surface(2025), and Reconstructed Landscape – Hannam District 3(2025) are works that translate the unstable sensations experienced by individuals within landscapes of redevelopment and demolition into ceramic cracks, surfaces, and decal images.

In 《Takvonsuzip Project 01 – Site Records》(Buyeon, 2026), the artist brings the skin of a place into contact with his own body through rubbing, reviving disappearing spaces as material records. Ultimately, his work asks what disappears, what remains as trace, and how those afterimages become sculptural form again.

Style & Contents

Centered on ceramics, Eum Kixung’s practice freely combines materials such as household waste, Styrofoam, stainless steel, synthetic resin, toys, neon, gold and silver, digital ceramic decals, resin, paper, wire, and epoxy. The ceramic tables, stools, and chandelier-like works presented in 《Incomplete Harmony》 have decorative and practical qualities, but in practice, they are closer to sculptural objects than functional craft pieces.

On the surfaces of ceramics, the artist places keywords such as NAG CHAMPA, VOYAGER, COVID-19, ITAEWON, and ASAKA like scribbles, layering decoration, message, personal taste, and the atmosphere of the time onto a single surface.
 
While being aware of the weight and limitations of clay, the artist has expanded those limits through combinations with other materials. KAT was developed as an extension of the 2020 work TAL(NEO SCULPTURE), using two opposing materials, ceramics and Styrofoam, together. Ceramics, with its weight, solidity, and glossy glaze, and Styrofoam, light yet capable of creating a large sense of mass, produce different textures and densities within a single work.

TERRIBLE Hybrid
is also a work in which heterogeneous elements come together as though forming one body, revealing the artist’s sense of looseness, grotesqueness, humor, and incomplete harmony. Here, hybridity is not simply a style, but a way in which different cultures, objects, and identities collide and coexist within one space.
 
After 2025, Eum’s material experiments became connected to ways of recording place. In 《Afterimages of Blurred Boundaries》, the artist translates cracks and fragments from redevelopment zones, vanished routes, and collapsed structures into ceramics, digital ceramic decals, and glaze cracks. Cracked surface deliberately reveals the cracking that occurs when clay and glaze meet, and visualizes the sensations of destruction and injury through cracks made in glass and traces of ink.

In 《Takvonsuzip Project 01 – Site Records》, rubbing appears as a new sculptural methodology. Songwol-dong Red Clay(2026) translates geological samples into a flat surface, while Terra-Cart(2026) combines mined clay, steel plate, wheels, sound, and photographs to show the process by which a place moves into another time and space. In this way, Eum’s form expands from ceramic objects to installation, surface, record, sound, and moving sculpture.

Topography & Continuity

Eum Kixung’s practice is distinctive in that he does not limit ceramics to functional craft or material-based sculpture, but uses it as an expanded language for addressing cities, objects, memory, and identity.

Eum uses ceramics as a medium that holds discarded objects, urban ruins, traces of redevelopment, migration, and hybrid sensations. In his work, ceramics reveals unstable states through cracks, bends, awkward combinations, and scribble-like surfaces. This incompleteness is not immaturity, but a method for holding onto what is disappearing and what has not yet been defined.
 
Eum has moved from private spaces and collected tastes toward the structures of the city and the afterimages of time. If 《An Artist’s Living room》 formed a personal world by combining the artist’s living room, studio, collected objects, and ceramics, 《Incomplete Harmony》 was an exhibition that sculpturalized hybrid identity through Itaewon’s multicultural environment and discarded objects.

Later, in the group exhibition 《Capturing Everyday Life》(Clayarch Gimhae Museum, 2023), he transferred the contrasting daily landscapes of Seoul and Jillye, Gimhae, onto ceramic surfaces as images. In 《Afterimages of Blurred Boundaries》 and 《Takvonsuzip Project 01 – Site Records》, his practice moved toward recording and restoring the sensations of disappearing places amid redevelopment, demolition, and changes in old urban districts.
 
His residency experiences at Incheon Art Platform, Chuncheon Art Village, Clayarch Gimhae Museum, and Marunuma Art-park have also become an important foundation for expanding his practice toward place, movement, and regional memory. His future work is expected to continue moving across ceramics, sculpture, rubbing, archiving, and urban research, addressing the sensations of disappearing places and incomplete beings on a broader terrain.

Works of Art

A Material Monument to the Vanishing

Articles

Exhibitions

Activities