Craft Companions @ Show Window #6: Silhouette

A woman in ancient Greece traced the outline of her departing lover's shadow on a wall. The potter Butades pressed clay into those lines to preserve his face. Yet the outline left behind does not tell us who he was. We imagine an unseen origin and add meaning to the traces that remain. The exhibition Silhouette begins with a question: what is concealed and added to bring something to its present form? Baek Jae-won and Oh Se-rin combine materials such as metal, clay, concrete and plastic within individual works to explore how objects change. Baek embeds metal remnants in concrete and breaks its surface to reveal the interior, or repeatedly connects metal units to create partially concealed outlines. Oh attaches and layers disused objects and traces of nature onto forms shaped from clay, bringing new beings into existence. Concealing and revealing, adding and accumulating unsettle familiar perceptions of objects in different ways, revealing relationships and possibilities previously unseen. Just as Butades pressed clay into the outline of a shadow to preserve a face, attaching, connecting, burying and breaking are more than means of reaching a result. These processes remain on a work's surface as traces of change and become ways of shaping accumulated time. Silhouette looks beyond completed forms to their present appearance, shaped through the process of making, and to meanings newly read within them. Note: the Seoul Museum of Craft Art's Craft Together @ Show Window exhibitions are a public craft engagement programme based on proposals submitted directly by craft artists. This exhibition is presented in collaboration with young craft artists from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture's Sindang Creative Arcade. Participating artists: Oh Se-rin and Baek Jae-won.