Koo Hyunmo Biography

Koo has explored the motif of the house since the mid-2000s, often employing natural materials such as wood, stone and moss to create sculptures and installations derived from his childhood memories. One such memory is of Sajik-dong, a neighbourhood in Seoul where Koo grew up and for which the artist's 2014 solo exhibition at PKM Gallery was named. In the show, Koo regarded the house as a fluid and unfixed entity, deconstructing it into its various constituents of roofs, walls, windows and doors. Roof (2014), for example, is a mobile sculpture that the artist constructed by mounting a section of a wooden roof on a pair of rockers. Moving back and forth whenever the spectator pushed it, Roof contested the commonly accepted view of the house as a static structure. This redefinition of the house was furthered by the audience's place in the exhibition space; to those standing next to the work, it appeared as a roof, but to those looking down from the second level of the gallery, it resembled a wooden floor.

Although the works in Sajik-dong were inspired by an actual neighbourhood, they do not purport to be accurate recreations. Deconstructed, abstracted and re-fabricated with tree branches (Village [2014]) or stones (Baekkob Rock [2008]), Koo's artworks offer portrayals of a town that is starkly different from Sajik-dong in both Seoul and his memories. Instead, the anonymity of their forms reminds viewers of the ordinary places that are significant to them.

Koo's preoccupation with memorialising the everyday is also central to his video works. In Philadelphus (2011)—a single-channel video included in Sajik-dong—philadelphus trees shift gently in a breeze while Bach's cantatas play in the background. The video was filmed through the window of the house Koo lived in during his residency in Germany in 2010, and is the record of a brief, unremarkable moment that the artist nevertheless felt compelled to capture.

Koo often incorporates natural elements into his works. For Acquired Nature—a solo exhibition at PKM in 2018—he presented sculptures and installations alongside drawings and maquettes documenting his ideas and processes that replicated organic entities such as clouds, stars, trees and insects. The mimetic tree branch in wall sculpture Zelkova (2018), for example, was not an actual branch but a brass piece modelled to look like zelkova, while Cloud (2016–18) mimicked the amorphous and weightless form of a cloud using urethane. By reproducing nature with technology, Koo suggested that in an urban environment where fabricated objects permeate life, the artificial is now, in its own way, natural.

Koo studied ceramics at Hongik University (2001) and sculpture at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (2008 and 2010). In addition to his exhibitions at PKM Gallery, Koo has held solo exhibitions at Stage 3x3, Seoul (2013); Gallery Korea, Berlin (2011); and Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Zellbiologie und Genetik, Dresden (2010), among others. Selected group exhibitions include Love Actually at Seoul Museum (2013); Way of Life, Art Center Nabi, Seoul (2011); and Where we come from and where we go, Geh8, Dresden (2008).

Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2018