By the Light Seeping Through the Gaps

The light that seeps through gaps has existed alongside us with the cracks in walls, the splits in wood, and the dust left on old shelves. Perhaps light is merely the heat the sun emits, yet people read countless stories into it. No matter how tightly sealed, light finds even the smallest opening and slips in, leaving visible yet untouchable traces within time and memory. Through the beams that stream between clouds, the exhibition 《Silver Lining》 follows these in-between spaces and lights in an attempt to look back on time and to observe the stories that bloom between them.

Thinking of small cracks and light, imagine a person with their eye to a camera viewfinder. Photography, inseparable from light, reaches in Eun Chun’s work, revealing itself in the light each photograph holds. Untitled (Kumgul) is oriented from the cave’s interior toward the outside. Passing through an entrance whose scale defies imagination and into a vast interior, the artist kept moving forward, turning their back on the light and heading into the dark. After finishing the shoot and preparing to return, Chun realized she had come precisely to photograph that moment — from darkness to light. At dusk she faces a wide field of daffodils and, beyond it, a distant glow (Old House). Even knowing the images are prints, one cannot take their eyes off the advancing red light. The horizontally moving light sends a signal that seems like I’m the only one left through the dimmed world. The sense of time in her photographs translates into a tactile experience of light and darkness. Opposite this, something seems to float in midair (Beklemmt #39). She said these are photographs of fish-shaped wood carving; again one recalls the light seen from inside a cave, ships passing on a darkened sea, and fish-like object floating in for deep-sea creatures — a sustained gaze on the things that shine within the dark.

The sails and anchors of ships that once roamed the seas have become bodies bereft of wind and ground (Wingless Groundless Torso series). Sails that suggest wings pushing forward and large bodies that glide like swimming are overlapped by Minhoon Kim’s delicate hand to make anchors that attempt to moor them. These crisscrossed sculptural works — no longer serving their original functions and now existing as symbolic language — function as a “sculptural commentary” for those who cannot navigate within institutions and norms. Compared with earlier beams that used industrial waste as a body and cement as a skin, the pillars shown in this exhibition (Birdfeet—Burnt Ballad series) mark both the interior and exterior of a body through charcoal and cement themselves. By placing charcoal discs and layering cement, these pillars follow the tradition of masonry. In the process of stacking, cement penetrates the gaps between pieces of charcoal and binds them more firmly, evoking an image of “small fragments relying on one another.” This mode of joining is also evident in his freely applied syntax of knots: the patterns created by his knots traverse the methods of traditional knotting and macramé. Like a single-stroke drawing, traditional knots—made by folding a long cord in half and crossing both sides from the center—depend on the tension of tightening and loosening. In contrast, macramé allows additional cords during the process, and all the tensions tightened in between become the pattern. In his work, a domain in which one can trace all past processes intersects with a symbolic world of the elements through variations in force and intensity.

Sungoo Im has been explored the materiality of paper to construct memory as a physical space. This exhibition reveals, behind those works, the artist seated at a small desk using only single sheets of paper and a pencil to hold on to memory. In her work, a door functions as a portal to another world and a passage toward her own memories. In the Oblique Room series, the building’s structural logic — one that would require sequential movement from near to far — becomes lose their meaning. Memory moves in an edited fashion across places, disregarding the linear perspective of time and location. In the series As If That Dawn Would Never Fade, begun with the memory of her suddenly departed companion animal, images run from a star-filled sky above, through deep forests and flower fields, and at last into a living room that feels as if a small creature has always been present. Her intention to represent metaphor “some face death, some hide the truth, and some miss those already gone” into images reverberates as time and space intertwine, and with it a yearning to follow the lost.

The three artists, each working in different media and forms, commonly reawaken moments and spaces we might easily have overlooked. They demonstrate how light that has seeped through gaps opens other narratives. This process goes beyond representation; it asks what we can see and remember within a world where times overlap and traces persist. 《Silver Lining》 thus affirms how ephemeral moments generate possibilities reviving the forgotten and revealing the unseen. Through this exhibition, we invite viewers to follow the light and gaze into the gaps we have passed by, proposing a space to revisit and reread the stories that emerges from within.

Curated and written by Jiyoung Min

Minhoon Kim(b. 1997) received his BFA in Environmental Sculpture from the University of Seoul and an MFA in Sculpture from Seoul National University. His recent solo exhibitions include Deeply Superficial (dive.seoul, Seoul, 2025), The Stump (Hall 1, Seoul, 2024), Four Beams (Boan1942, Seoul, 2023), LANDS, CAKE (Art Space Seogyo, Seoul, 2023), and GRABO (UOS Redbrick gallery, Seoul, 2022). Major group exhibitions include UnHouse (Frieze House Seoul, Seoul, 2025), Sculptural Sports Day (Seoul National University Power Plant, Seoul, 2025), Bench Side (d/p, Seoul, 2023) etc.

Sungoo Im(b. 1990) earned both her BFA and MFA in Department of Fine Arts from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. Her recent solo exhibitions include A Castle Built of Dust (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), Wall • Rock • Flood • Oneself (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2022), A Flower Which Can’t Even Be Seen: Excavating Footprints (SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2022), The Days Were Strange and Peaceful (Hakgojae Design Project Space, Seoul, 2020), and Black Sand on Paper (Gallery Chosun, Seoul, 2019). She has participated in major group exhibitions such as Dear My Forest (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2024), Doosan Artlab 2022 (Doosan Gallery, Seoul, 2022), and Unfamiliar Expedition (drawingRoom, Seoul, 2021). Im has also taken part in residency programs at Suwon Art Studio (Korea, 2025), Incheon Art Platform (Korea, 2023), and Yangju Art Studio (Korea, 2022).

Eun Chun(b. 1977) received BFA in sculpture at Chung-Ang University and Master d’Arts, mention Arts plastiques, spécialité Photographie at Université Paris 8. Her recent solo exhibitions include To the North Facing Window (PIBI Gallery, Seoul, 2024), Winter in My Arms (Perigee Gallery, Seoul, 2022), Glider (Gallery 2, Seoul, 2020), and Floor (SeMA Storage, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2019), among a total of ten solo presentations. Chun has participated in numerous group exhibitions such as Amado Art Space, DOOSAN Gallery, Primary Practice, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, GALLERY2, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Seoul Museum of Art, HITE Collection, Museum SAN, and SongEun Art Space, etc. Residencies include Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2021), SeMA Nanji Residency, Seoul Museum of Art (2020), and MMCA Goyang Residency, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (2017). Awards include the SongEun Art Award—Excellence Prize (SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation, 2018) and the Winner of Amado Photography Award (Amado Art Space, 2017). Her work is held in public and private collections including Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Daegu Art Museum, GoEun Museum of Photography, OCI Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation, Government Art Bank, and Art Bank in MMCA.