Jinnie Seo: Her Sides of Us

Gallery Baton is pleased to present Her Sides of Us, a solo exhibition by Jinnie Seo, from August 27th to September 29th, 2020. Seo creates a visionary landscape of her mind delving into certain sensibilities of emotions dwelling in her consciousness. Her creative approach starts with the rhythmic interplay of hand gestures, which movement tells intimate stories unfurling from her memories. The course of her methodology includes carefully unwinding strands of emotions forming a series of visual lexicons and ultimately materializing them in the realm of reality. An emotion is a state of intuitive feeling derived from experiences stemming from one’s surrounding space or interrelationship with others. These salient points trigger the immersive spatial and temporal transformation of the exhibition space encapsulating her core idea of on-site installation works. By constructing experiential space interwoven with personal memories, she shares her visualized emotion with the viewers and invites them to have their own experiences of consciousness.

Upon entering an elongated rectangular space of the gallery, the viewer first encounters the large-scale Copper Open Cube Sculptures installed in a diagonal formation. Variable in dimensions, these open cube sculptures consist of thousands of thin copper cube tubes intricately hand woven in repeated square and rectangular patterns. Each sculpture is mounted onto the ceiling maintaining a minimal gap almost reaching the floor. This new series by Seo whose modularized structure with regularity as well as abstract appearance will not be unfamiliar as it contains fundamental elements of Minimalist art.

With their industrial scale, the copper sculptures resemble mesh fence walls that are readily found in urban environments. As an architectural component, a wall structure provides the essential functions of insulating lights and sound, protecting and dividing spaces. However, in this exhibition, the copper sculptural installation pieces perform the role of a passage, transit space. In transitory environment, all the senses are heightened as one navigates through and encounters the unknowns. Seo has ingeniously designed a passageway for the spectators to experience the exhibition in a sequential manner. Furthermore, the physical movement of the body as one walks, turns, and pauses at each interval of the work is deeply interconnected to the way one perceives the exhibition as a whole. The passageway ultimately leads to encounter Our Sides Illuminated (for My Father) (2020). Cerulean blue, conveying the notion of 'truth' for the artist, covers the entire surface of curvilinear form of a 6.5m wide plywood panel. Myriad colonies of delicately painted fine gold and silver lines are traversing across and soaring upward in the expanded field of blue. Atmosphere of sublime stillness reverberates illuminating the rays of hope.

The audience who walks along the guided path do not remain static in her works, but rather play a proactive factor fulfilling the artist’s intention of constructing experiential space. The human figure in motion is detected through the copper sculptures as a sequence of enlarged flickering halftone dots dividing the body into grid units. Accordingly, the distance between the one person and the other and their mutual movements form continuous waves of spectacle. This deliberately planned mutual interference stimulates the participatory nature of the exhibition.

Oscillating between stillness and motion, the work’s spatial and temporal layering is influenced by Seo’s relationship with time. In essence, time is her collaborator as observed in her usage of copper. Oxidation, which chemical shift occurs over a period of time, changes the shimmering luminosity of copper. Through this process a deeper level of consciousness becomes embedded into each object. Then oils from Seo’s fingers imprint her consciousness upon the material surfaces. Only after a course of time does her presence become revealed. The objects evolve from their original luminous state into aged presences.

Dan Flavin (1933-1996) mentioned, “Individual parts of a system are not in themselves important but are relevant only in the way they are used in the enclosed logic of the whole”. This sentence gives an insight into understanding Seo’s attitude towards creation. The exhibition offers an opportunity to discover Seo’s unique rhizomatic approach to building a singular sentient landscape through the usage of disparate materials and methods to heighten an understanding of time and space. The viewers are invited to participate in the journey into the stillness of ‘Her Sides of Us’.    

Jinnie Seo (b.1963 in Seoul, Korea) lives and works in Seoul, Korea. She has received a BA in biology from New York University, New York and studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine before receiving an MFA from New York University. Seo has held solo exhibitions at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan (2007); Mongin Art Center, Seoul (2007); National Museum of Singapore, Singapore (2008); Horim Art Center, Seoul (2010); and Hapjungjigu, Seoul (2017). Her recent solo presentation in Insights at Art Basel Hong Kong (2019) with Gallery Baton came under the spotlight. She has participated in group exhibitions at Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2004); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2006); Plateau, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2014); National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul (2015); and La Triennale di Milano, Milan (2016). Her works are included in the collections of various institutions and corporations. Her recent commissioned works are installed at Incheon International Airport Terminal Two, Incheon and New Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto.