Critique
Kim Yesung (Craft Curator, The Story Production Co., Ltd. Director)
Objects at the Threshold
Seo Jeonghwa’s practice begins with the act of working with materials; however, his focus lies in revealing states in which different substances come into contact, permeate one another, and resist being fully defined by their individual names. The Ambiguity series, which forms the core of this exhibition, presents this inquiry in its most condensed form. Here, the artist does not simply juxtapose wood and metal. Instead, scenes in which one property appears to transition into another momentarily suspend the viewer’s habitual impulse to immediately identify and categorize materials.
The intention to foreground material properties, alongside a sustained inquiry into how these materials are situated within structure and function, has been consistently developed throughout his earlier works. While Material Composition emphasized differences in texture, temperature, density, and surface to evoke the presence of material itself, Structure for Use explored how objects might retain structural tension while fulfilling practical functions. If the former heightened sensory awareness of material, the latter questioned how it is organized within the order of form and function. Ambiguity emerges at the intersection of these two trajectories. In this series, the artist shifts focus from defining materials to revealing the boundaries and processes through which differing properties converge and transform.
The technique of aluminum sand casting serves as a crucial medium, transferring the surface and traces of growth found in wood onto the skin of metal. This method enables a condition in which disparate materials appear to meet and permeate one another. Rather than merely reproducing visual resemblance, it functions as a sculptural device that delays definitive recognition of material identity. Confronted with cold, rigid metal, the viewer perceives traces of organic growth; within forms that resemble wood, one discerns the precision of artificial fabrication. In that moment, the object resists reduction to a single attribute. Metal remains metal while bearing the grain of wood, and structures stand as such while appearing to grow organically. The object is thus understood not as a fixed result, but as a process in which properties shift and perception is continually renewed.
