Reconstructing Sequences

Soyoung Chung

〈Evaporation〉, 2024.

Installation, aluminum, dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

〈Condensation〉, 2023-2024.

Installation, aluminum, dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

〈Floating〉, 2024.

Installation, glass, sand, dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

〈Sinking〉, 2024.

Installation, resin, and waste from the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office, dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

Soyoung Chung expands and experiments with the boundaries of the sculpture medium through site-specific installations, sculptures, videos, and public interventions. Interested in what lies beneath (geology) and above (geopolitics) the land she stands on, the artist exposes the temporal layers of places based on geology while contemplating the material time found in historical places situated on geopolitical boundaries.

Incidents leave traces that attest to time before vanishing into the air.

Evaporation and Condensation capture the fleeting phenomena that occur between things that move and change and things that are fixed and solid. Frozen time disrupts bearings and blurs boundaries. The metal sculpture composed of watermarks creates a thin layer on the ground outside the ACC, coalescing on the surface. The sculpture seems to follow yet disregard the grid lines drawn on the ground, gathering and dispersing to infringe upon the perceived boundaries.

Is it water from the past that has not evaporated, or is it a new waterway flowing in from the outside? What should have flowed and vanished instead shines and illuminates the surroundings.

Lightness and heaviness coexist in the sculptures Sinking, created by hardening cement powder, soil, and waste materials from the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office, and Floating, composed of sand locked inside a transparent stone. The boundary between the peacefully divided world fades, and things that float and things that sink can change their positions at any time. The forces of lightness and heaviness are reversed and embraced, ultimately producing a cohesive mass. A stone that has rolled in from somewhere, half a lump, and the dust accumulating on every step of a stairway exist as deposits, repeating extinction and production in a reversed space and perpetual time.