Esther Schipper Seoul presents recent sculptures by Young Joon Kwak and Eusung Lee, in collaboration with Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

Kwak’s Choreography for Divine Transitions (Gestures) is an expansive, cumulative suite of sculptural compositions. For its inaugural arrangement, an ensemble of bodily fragments—cast from friends and collaborators—takes center stage. Each component’s concave resin surface is burnished with pigmented wax to flesh out embodied impressions, while its convex shell—a shield covered with shards of mirrored glass—acts as protection, alluring the viewer for an orchestrated encounter. Shimmering and refracting light off the wall, a luminous tondo jeweled with rhinestones emanates pastel pinks, blues, and iridescents emblematic of the transgender pride flag. As a symbolic gesture, Kwak’s Trans 삼태극 reenvisions sam-taegeuk’s traditional, primary color scheme (representing earth, heaven, and humanity) to embrace and safeguard all bodies in transformation.

Lee’s tripartite wall sculptures (from her Symbolon series) are amalgamations of bisected halves, spliced and reassembled in a symbolic three-way interchange. A hand-carved wooden leg, wings made of fabric and yarn, and a metallic model of Alef’s flying car are on a collision course propelled by flights of fancy and technological innovations. With their seams exposed, the uncanny recompositions of Bucentaur, Study of Model A, and Eponym reveal fissures in the building blocks of evolutionary progress. By co-opting visual lexicon for movement and accelerated speed, Lee’s chimerical formulations underscore the threshold of our imagination when confounded by fraught egos.

Link to download a conversation between Young Joon Kwak and Eusung Lee will be available at the gallery.