Nature has reached a new age of abstraction amid its co-evolution alongside humanity, breaking the binary understanding that humans and the natural world are somehow distinct from each other. Its meaning has evolved beyond the image of an untouched, wild, environment, and now encompasses the hybrid and technological ways we engage with our planet.
Wonmin seeks to find a way to trace and explore our current, often paradoxical, natural existence. On Earth investigates the presence and balance of competing forces through Wonmin’s latest collections, Plain Cuts_Stone&Steel and Plain Cuts_Remediated. Whereas Stone&Steel demonstrates a juxtaposed material encounter of nature against man, Wonmin develops his Remediated series as an expression of a new nature humans have created.
The volcanic rocks of Stone&Steel form the core of the exhibition, representing the Earth itself. The Remediated artworks, reproduced in coloured resins and glass plates, are transparent, a phenomenon rarely experienced in nature, and act as a negative balance of Stone&Steel. The molecular transformation creates a parallel form of each stone, and allows for an unexpected perspective within the stone itself, displaying simultaneous depths and surface reflections.
On Earth envisions the land and oceans that encompass the surface of the planet, as seen from a great distance. Each chisel mark on the stone creates a miniature mountain range; each polished resin aperture translates to an in-land sea. The South-Korean artist illustrates the interconnections between nature and artifice through his choice of materials: natural stone, sculpted by human hands; resin, imitative of stone; steel and glass plates, their shapes dictated by that of each stone.
Through a minimalist framework, Wonmin states that everything on Earth, even man-made creations, is in fact a product of nature, as we ourselves are. Harnessing the natural and technological forces at his disposal, Wonmin reconciles many dualities into materially succinct artworks, unique products of nature and man together.
