Art context
A traditional Korean-looking but highly technological glass bowl is filled with dry ice and placed inside a small traditional Korean-style gazebo on the seacoast at Songil-jeong (288-63 Songjeong-dong, Haeundae-gu, Busan). The sea breeze is liquified and frozen by the dry ice, causing an ice membrane to form on the surface of the glass. As cooling ends, the ice melts into water at the bottom of the bowl, leaving a visible trace or memory of the East Sea or Pacific Ocean wind and water. The drops are collected in a flask and, along with a video and text about the creation of 'To See The Wind,' are displayed in the gallery space of Naghty Muse.
'To See The Wind' is connected to nature through temporality and environmental interaction. The piece emphasizes ecological awareness and the interplay of human and natural systems. It uses dry ice and sea wind to create transient ice patterns, focusing on environmental processes. Alternatively, it visualises part of becoming aware of the ephemerality and materiality of everything around us, living or non-living.
'To See The Wind' is an ephemeral sculpture, with ice forming and melting, reflecting contemporary global art trends such as those seen at events like Frieze Seoul and the Busan Biennale. These events emphasize sustainability, temporality, and challenge the Anthropocenic worldview. The work’s fleeting nature situates it within the Ephemeral Art movement, which values impermanence and the imprint of human-nature interaction. The collection of water droplets in a flask as a “memory” of the wind responds to my aim to archive fleeting moments through materials sensorially marked by temporal experiences.
Korean context
The choice for 'To See The Wind' to be inside a traditional Korean coastal gazebo at (288-63 Songjeong-dong, Haeundae-gu) in Busan makes the work a Site-Specific art project, related to the same global movement where the artwork’s meaning is inseparable from its location. This resonates with the minimalist impact of specific cultural and natural spots of nowhere to evoke universal meanings. The piece’s interaction with the flow of the East Sea’s wind and waters is a dialogue between local specificity and global environmental context.
Songil-jeong is a traditional Korean gazebo in Haeundae-gu, surrounded by a pine park for reflection and meditation. Its coastal location by the East Sea ties it to Busan’s maritime identity, a city historically shaped by trade, fishing, and cultural exchange with Japan and beyond. As a space for contemplation, the gazebo evokes Korea’s Confucian and Buddhist traditions, where nature is a medium for spiritual insight.
Philosophic context
'To See The Wind' embodies my Ph.D. dissertation “Water as Flowevent” by capturing water’s transformative journey, vapor to ice to liquid, as a Heraclitean process of flux, where change is the only constant. On the other hand, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy frames the sculpture as a poetic act of unconcealing, revealing the wind’s invisible presence through ice patterns in the meditative context of Songil-jeong, a dwelling site. And finally, Paul Ricoeur’s narrative theory connects to the collected droplets, which serve as a material memory of the East Sea, exhibited with video and text to construct a story of environmental interaction. These philosophies position the work as a meditation on temporality, human-nature relations, and the preservation of fleeting moments, aligning with my dissertation’s exploration of water’s dynamic role.
July 7, 2025
Busan
