Seongsan Shell Mound

Choi Goen, Airlock, 2024, stainless steel pipes, wood, dimensions variable, Commissioned by the 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2024

Choi Goen uses the columns between the interior and exterior of the building as a support to create a spiraling sculpture that pulls taut the temporalities of the industrial park and the shell mound. The planned factory landscape and the ruins that speak to the time before it, the refined lines of the pipes themselves and the curves of a natural world trying to distance itself — everything is jumbled together. Using the industrial systems and products that still very much serve as the foundations of our modern society despite now being so effectively cloaked by countless invisible technologies, Choi’s work offers a glimpse of the compressed time that exists beyond it all.