Myoungwook Huh & Sangmin Lee: The Weight of Time, The Light of the Present
This exhibition brings together the works of two Korean artists, Sangmin Lee and Myougnwook Huh, to explore different ways in which time can be perceived and remembered. While their materials and approaches differ, both artists engage with the same fundamental question: how can an invisible concept such as time take form within matter?
Sangmin Lee’s glass works focus on the fleeting nature of the present. A droplet of water resting on a leaf, briefly catching the light before disappearing, becomes the starting point of his work. Through glass, he captures this fragile moment. Yet the moment is never fixed. Light passes through and reflects across the carved surfaces of the glass, shifting with the viewer’s movement and the changing angle of light. In Lee’s work, the present is not a static point in time but an event continuously renewed through light. Rather than preserving the moment, the glass allows the present to emerge again and again.
Myougnwook Huh’s lacquer paintings reveal a very different sense of time. His works are built through a slow and repetitive process of layering, drying, and polishing. Color does not appear instantly; it gradually matures through time. What accumulates in these surfaces is not only layers of pigment but also traces of the artist’s decisions, hesitation, patience, and the rhythms of daily life. Though the paintings may appear as single planes of color, they contain countless layers beneath the surface. Here, time does not simply pass. It settles, leaving its weight within the material.
Glass and lacquer, transparency and opacity, moment and accumulation. These contrasts shape the dialogue of the exhibition. Rather than opposing one another, the two practices illuminate different dimensions of time. If Sangmin Lee’s work calls forth the present through light, Myougnwook Huh’s work reveals the depth created by time’s gradual accumulation. One appears as the light of the present, the other as the weight of time.
Myoungwook Huh & Sangmin Lee:: Le poids du temps, la lumière du présent does not attempt to define time. Instead, it leaves a question open.
Does time flow, or does it accumulate? Do moments disappear, or do they remain in another form?
Moving between the works of the two artists, viewers are invited to reflect on these questions through their own memory and perception. In this way, the exhibition becomes a space where time can be experienced anew through materials and sensibilities rooted in Korean artistic traditions.
This exhibition brings together the works of two Korean artists, Sangmin Lee and Myougnwook Huh, to explore different ways in which time can be perceived and remembered. While their materials and approaches differ, both artists engage with the same fundamental question: how can an invisible concept such as time take form within matter?
Sangmin Lee’s glass works focus on the fleeting nature of the present. A droplet of water resting on a leaf, briefly catching the light before disappearing, becomes the starting point of his work. Through glass, he captures this fragile moment. Yet the moment is never fixed. Light passes through and reflects across the carved surfaces of the glass, shifting with the viewer’s movement and the changing angle of light. In Lee’s work, the present is not a static point in time but an event continuously renewed through light. Rather than preserving the moment, the glass allows the present to emerge again and again.
Myougnwook Huh’s lacquer paintings reveal a very different sense of time. His works are built through a slow and repetitive process of layering, drying, and polishing. Color does not appear instantly; it gradually matures through time. What accumulates in these surfaces is not only layers of pigment but also traces of the artist’s decisions, hesitation, patience, and the rhythms of daily life. Though the paintings may appear as single planes of color, they contain countless layers beneath the surface. Here, time does not simply pass. It settles, leaving its weight within the material.
Glass and lacquer, transparency and opacity, moment and accumulation. These contrasts shape the dialogue of the exhibition. Rather than opposing one another, the two practices illuminate different dimensions of time. If Sangmin Lee’s work calls forth the present through light, Myougnwook Huh’s work reveals the depth created by time’s gradual accumulation. One appears as the light of the present, the other as the weight of time.
Myoungwook Huh & Sangmin Lee:: Le poids du temps, la lumière du présent does not attempt to define time. Instead, it leaves a question open.
Does time flow, or does it accumulate? Do moments disappear, or do they remain in another form?
Moving between the works of the two artists, viewers are invited to reflect on these questions through their own memory and perception. In this way, the exhibition becomes a space where time can be experienced anew through materials and sensibilities rooted in Korean artistic traditions.
