〈Branches, Claws, Bones and Thread〉, 2025
Curated and participated in the exhibition.
Just as humans tend to perceive faces in clouds or animals in stains, we have an apophenic inclination to find patterns among unrelated things.
The exhibition brought together artists Jean Song, Jongyeon Lim, and Taemin Ju, who collected and restructured othered beings to reveal that humanity is formed in relation to the Other.
By observing nonhuman entities—such as plants, organisms, and objects—the three artists reassembled, combined, or dismantled them through their own formal languages. Departing from an anthropocentric perspective, the exhibition retraced the boundaries and conditions of humanity through marginalized subjects, inviting viewers to reflect on the meaning of human existence and to reconsider what we choose to assign value to or to disregard.
Branches, Claws, Bones and Thread, Seoripul Gallery, Seoul, 2025, Installation views
Hookie, 2025, mixed media on paper, 50x60.8cm
Gragofly, 2025, mixed media on paper, 53x65cm
Two hybrid beings, each governed by a different biological order, confront one another in a vertical tension. Their scales and claws, wings and teeth serve not only as physical devices for survival but also as symbols of emotional excess and sensory collision. By examining the ecological structures of animals and plants, the artist metaphorically traces how these systems intersect with the fissures and conflicts found in human society.
Although these creatures do not exist in reality, they become speculative annotations that reflect the world we live in. The scene of confrontation thus moves beyond simple conflict, expanding into a visual meditation on how disparate forms of existence might inhabit the same pictorial space.
Jean Song & Taemin Ju, The Sandbornes, Altarbound, 2025, Song’s drawings and bird objects, Ju’s sculpture, Dimensions variable
This collaborative installation presents the heterogeneous formal languages of two artists colliding and resonating within a single space. By juxtaposing drawings surrounding a sculpture with a three-legged bird object, Song Jean proposes ambiguous relationships between object and animality, gesture and gaze. The drawings function like desert murals, while the objects encircle the sculpture in positions reminiscent of guardian spirits.
The beings born from sand do not possess fixed identities; rather, they are assembled, interwoven, and offered up like ritual sacrifices. In doing so, the work explores the recurring hybridity of matter, the invisibility of subjectivity, and the threshold at which new formal languages emerge beyond the boundaries of established form.
At the rear of the gallery, the “Multi-Hall” further clarifies this collaborative structure. Here, sketches, drawings, fragments of objects, and sculptural experiments are displayed in layered arrangements, revealing the “in-progress” state of the works. The space activates apophenic perception itself, encouraging viewers to construct meaning from disparate fragments. The byproducts of the work no longer serve as mere references but function as “body parts” imbued with equivalent sculptural questions, requiring the audience’s own imagination and perception to form a network of meanings.
Photo by Seoripul Gallery, Yun Gu Ji