Manmade gardens are created by mimicking nature, and originate from human desires for utopia within nature. It creates a new landscape by becoming an independent world or an ecosystem. The etymology of the word 'garden' refers to 'enclosure surrounded by walls and fences.' Mainly built by a meticulous composition and combination of natural and artificial materials, the garden as an exquisite amalgamation of nature and culture reflects the long-standing human desires for aesthetics and delightful indulgence in nature. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon explores the garden as the artists' reaction to nature and the world around us, and the way the artists grant the garden their own symbolic meaning. The exhibited works explore issues of reality and fiction, or simulacrum and reproduction, and attempt at methodological experiments that observe and represent the various ecosystems around us today in diverse ways. They also use nature as the motif to metaphorically reveal the psychological state derived from an individual's identity, or build a media ecosystem that interacts with the audience. In essence, the exhibition is the outcome of the artists' insightful perspective, senses, and interpretation of the world.

Yang Seungwon delves into his fascination with the ways in which Zen gardens symbolically express nature, and explores his ideas on reality and nonreality, and real and fake. Combining strictly staged or artificially manipulated photographs and manmade environment, his garden reflects phenomena around us. Cho Leesop constructs psychological landscapes through sculptures that resemble flowers and plants. The artist's glittery but black sculptures charged with both scars and beauty exhibit the double-sidedness of life and reflect the inner world of the artist. Hyun Nahm's work begins with the artist's interest in the concept of 'Chukgyeong' (miniascape), the art of miniaturising vast landscapes of nature. The artist fully engages with the unique properties of industrial materials that are widely used today, and tries to capture the present landscape through such use of materials as opposed to reproducing his subject. Kim Joon researches certain areas in Korea and abroad, archiving sounds of different times and spaces. His works are a collection and reconstitution of the rocks and plants found in the natural environment of such regions. The artist reproduces, assembles, and positions parts of nature in various ways, and the audience experiences the work synesthetically by directly shaking the speakers. Inspired mainly by natural phenomena, Kohui explores relationships linked to sound and builds an aural ecosystem through interactions with the audience. Designed to traverse across what is predictable and unpredictable, his work reflects the changing digital environment around us and stirs up curiosity about the future ecosystem.

The exhibition title Hanging Gardens of Babylon is a huge tiered rooftop garden that is said to have existed in ancient Babylon. There are questions as to whether it actually existed, but the lush, tree-filled garden, created by drawing water to a high ground with the architectural technology of the time in a region where it hardly rains, is considered one of the most miraculous manmade architectural works of all times. The hanging garden was the representative outcome and product of human desires to create a green mountain-like landscape that is almost impossible on dry land. While desires for nature take a different form today from that of the past, the aspirations to build an almost impossible world have long remained a driving force in art.

In the modern society, the garden extends to the concept of common land such as public gardens or even parks, and exemplifies an open space and site of sharing and enjoyment for the public. In the process of modernisation, parks for communities began to be designed, and the private garden—a physical and spiritual space that enhances the quality of human life—also began to be transformed into public parks. The Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, which was built as the Belgian Consulate for diplomatic purposes in the early 1900s, has been used as an art museum since 2004, reinvented into a space where the public can collectively appreciate and enjoy the architecture of the museum and the exhibited artworks. In this space that permeates the everyday life of the public, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon welcomes the audience through various senses including sight, sound, touch, and smell through the exhibition and related programs. We hope that each unique ecosystem created by the five artists in the exhibition can be shared with the audience through various channels, and reach new meanings in our everyday life as fresh inspirations.

Press release courtesy Seoul Museum of Art | SeMA.