FLOW OF DEBRIS: 파편의 흐름

Min SungHong focuses on the unease individuals feel when their surrounding environment changes due to the unavoidable influence of social systems, as well as how such reactions are perceived. In particular, the artist collects and disassembles objects and furnishings left behind after people vacate a space items that have lost their original function and reconfigures them into variable structures and installations. In this process, decorative elements such as beads and lace, as well as collected landscape images, are integrated onto the surfaces of these assemblages, which sensitively express points of contact between the individual and external changes.

The exhibition title, Flow of Debris, refers to “debris” as small, broken-off fragments or pieces separated from objects. It also evokes the geological phenomena of debris flow where external forces or currents cause structural transformation or relocation.
In the series Exercise for Painting, Exercise for Drawing, 2025, collected objects from various sources are shredded into smaller fragments using a wood chipper. These fragments are then scattered and settled onto surfaces demarcated by lines and colors made with multicolored ballpoint pens symbolic of social systems and administrative structures and chalk powder used in architecture. These landscapes appear fluid and uncertain, symbolizing how individuals, when faced with situational changes, break away from their groups, settle into new places, form distinct territories, and undergo a process of re-aggregation and adaptation.
To the artist, fragmented objects are not merely things but extensions of the self entities that shed their externally imposed fixity and remain infinitely open to transformation into other beings. Reflecting a nomadic way of thinking, Min SungHong’s objects embody a desire to shift one’s identity or to search for a new self in response to their environment.

The artist’s long-standing conceptual keywords, “migration” and “dispersion,” refer not only to physical movement but also to perceptual and contextual transitions. These ideas symbolize shifts in thinking that cross the boundaries between the everyday and the extraordinary, past and present, subject and object, reality and the non-real. In this sense, the process of working with discarded objects directly connects to the conceptual meaning of the work. This symbolic approach reflects the influence of process art, where the making itself is considered as important as the outcome.

In this exhibition, Min SungHong presents an installation titled Circulating Body_Antenna Bird, 2025, which transforms collected objects into anthropomorphic forms and incorporates a crystal radio. Also known as a germanium or mineral radio, this device converts ambient electromagnetic waves into sound without the need for external power. The artist, whose practice has long explored invisible forces, desires, and movements within personal, collective, and societal networks, uses this restructured object an antenna as a medium to connect the work’s long-held conceptual focus with the transmission of unseen signals.
The installation features a flexible, interconnecting structure that can expand within the space. Through this transformation, each component is imbued with internal meaning while also inviting viewers to explore its external relationships and points of connection.