Choi Seowoo

Choi Seowoo is an artist who explores the tension between objects and the body, presence and absence, through repetition, materiality, and the sensations of incompleteness. He draws attention to the concept of “the impossible act of touching the untouchable,” and attempts to sculpt marginal sensations—those that fail to take form, lingering traces, or the unreachable surface of skin. His practice involves stacking and dismantling clay, piercing and filling holes in a repetitive cycle—not to achieve a final form, but to reveal imperfect wrinkles and remnants that arise from evaporation, accumulation, cracking, and trembling. For the artist, this process is not merely physical construction, but a poetic meditation on the conditions of existence and the language of matter. Motifs such as wrinkles, cracks, and overlaps recur throughout his work—not as superficial results, but as sculptural metaphors for dual modes of being. Through these formal languages, Choi sensorially explores the gap between things that appear to touch yet never truly meet, prompting viewers to become aware of that subtle interval. Utilizing diverse media such as ceramics, glass, clay, and painterly coloration, he constructs objects that blend contrasting textures—transparency and opacity, hardness and fragility. Each work, grounded in structures of fragmentation, discontinuity, and repetition, poses fundamental questions about the very nature of being.