Full description from the venue
OKNP (Seoul) presents Sungim Choi’s solo exhibition, The Breath of Things , from August 20 through October 1. Choi is an artist whose installation work has continuously explored questions of time, place, and relationships. By reconfiguring the forms and material qualities of objects and weaving disparate elements together, she reveals the possibilities of connection hidden between things that appear separate. The artist describes this as “working as a way of being with life and everything else around me.” This exhibition focuses on two-dimensional works and objects that extend from her installation works, presenting her ongoing exploration in a new form.
Installed in a row in Gallery 1, 24 consists of twelve works composed of slender metal columns joined with wood, each standing at approximately human height. Conical forms within the columns maintain a taut equilibrium, their pointed ends facing downward as though anchoring themselves firmly in place. Similar yet distinct, each column holds a piece of wood with its own unique grain. Though standing along the same line, they possess different eye levels and rhythms of breath. Like the twenty-four seasonal divisions that make up the year, their upright forms convey not precariousness, but rather what the artist describes as “a strong mental and physical state that allows one to remain firmly rooted in everyday life, regardless of circumstance.” Each bearing its own weight, the twelve columns evoke the rhythm of time accumulating and returning in cycles through the quiet tension of simply standing and enduring.
A Step consists of four slender stainless-steel columns positioned beside a window where natural light enters the gallery. As its title suggests, the work gives form to the act of taking a step. Standing upright in the light filtering through the window, the columns capture the moment of a body stepping toward the world, at the boundaries between one another, and between the enclosed interior and the open world beyond. Forward movement and stillness overlap within a single form, holding both the tension and energy of reaching toward a relationship.
Positioned in front of Gallery 2, the two works that make up The Tower of Time rise vertically toward the sky. Layers of stainless steel and transparent acrylic rods form upright columns through which light and the changing seasons pass. Set alongside the trees and wind of the garden, the towers layer artificial time over the time of nature, allowing the cyclical rhythm that unfolds indoors in 24 to resonate once again in an open space.
Membrane is a translucent screen constructed from layers of plastic honeycomb and cotton. Light entering through the window passes through countless tubes, softly illuminating the entire surface. Colored fragments move across it in a zigzag pattern, filling and emptying its openings to create shifting patterns of light from moment to moment. For the artist, however, the material that makes up this surface is not simply its honeycomb structure, but the time of life itself: “an hour, two hours, half a day, a day, a season, and a year.” Separating inside from outside while still allowing light and vision to pass through, this thin membrane bears the traces of the artist’s repeated gestures as countless fragments are placed one by one. In doing so, it quietly reminds us that it is only through the gradual accumulation of small and seemingly insignificant things that a landscape eventually comes into being.
Pore consists of two large-scale works whose surfaces are covered with densely arranged points of color spreading in zigzag patterns. Formed from countless openings, each surface becomes both a passage through which air can move between inside and outside and a space where breath can finally emerge amid dense repetition. As individual points accumulate into a larger rhythm, the work translates the sensation of objects and bodies breathing together onto a two-dimensional plane. Facing them is Between , a twelve-part series in which small surfaces, each carrying a distinct pattern and texture, are joined in a single line, repeating the rhythm of relationships formed as individual fragments come together.
The Breath of Things refers both to the rhythm of time accumulated within a space and to the traces of lives formed as different beings enter into relationships and exist together. Through the time and memory embedded in objects, Choi evokes a sense of connections that remain unseen. As she states, “Emptiness gives rise to relationships.” The taut intervals within each work, as well as the spaces between the works themselves, delicately unfold different layers of relationships between objects and people, inside and outside, individual and collective. Following the breath of these connections, the exhibition quietly asks what it means to exist together.
Sungim Choi is a Korea-based artist. She received her BFA in Fine Arts and MFA in Fine Arts and Printmaking from Ewha Womans University. She has held solo exhibitions at ThisWeekendRoom in 2020 and SongEun ArtSpace in 2021, among others. Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions at numerous art institutions, including the MMCA Changdong Residency, SOMA Museum of Art, Gwangju Museum of Art, Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, and Sehwa Museum of Art. She has participated in artist residency programs at SongEun Artist Studio in 2020, the MMCA Changdong Residency in 2025, and the Suwon Cultural Foundation’s Suwon Art Studio PRJD in 2026.