SEUNG YUL OH

Depictions of animals have been included in visual art since the beginning of time and are often thought of as the stuff of childhood, as cute and somehow sentimental. However, Oh approaches this whimsical territory slyly, previously presenting overbearing penguins, odd bird-egg combinations, and supersized mice perched on their hind legs into signifiers of something more. The cute innocence of his anthropomorphic sculptures reminds us of comforting childhood characters, but, as with other depictions of animals in art and literature, they also offer a reflection of the world and our own relationship to it.

Oh is known for a practice that playfully explores properties of space and experiments with materials and movement. His inflatables float elegantly or define unnoticed architectural space, orchestrating relationships that were formally invisible. Oh’s new sculpture Huggong Monologue returns to the use of captured air to challenge and redefine space within the gallery. For much of the history of Western sculpture the art form was solid and robust. Created from stone or metal and meant to both stand the test of time and express noble sentiment, the 20th century arrival of unconventional materials on three-dimensional art practice blew this understanding apart.

Huggong Monologue introduces a soft element into the hard shell of Starkwhite’s architecture, the exact form of the 100 metre long sculpture left to chance and intentionally only discovered upon inflation in the gallery. Likening the experience a time when the school-aged Oh let off a fire extinguisher in the classroom, he sought to again feel the adrenaline and sensation of simultaneous fear and joy the prank brought. Both control and out of control, this sculpture echoes that experience and offers it to the exhibition’s audience. The work’s reddish–pink hue remembers the colour experienced through the thin skin of closed eye lids, “The colour of when things are invisible. The bright darkness. Tubes of expansion, peripheral, translucent” Oh explains.