METAMORPHOSIS

Galerie Noir, Seoul, South Korea
2025.12.19 - 2026.02.22
Solo Exhibition

When materials that carry the languages of different eras are brought together in a single place, we witness an event that goes beyond mere combination. Byungsub Kim’s work explores precisely this aesthetic of eventfulness. Antique furniture imbued with the depth of tradition and stainless steel that reveals the temporality of industrial modernity collide and intersect in this exhibition, reconstructing unfamiliar forms of functionality as if borrowing time from one another.

Objects that have lost or been forgotten in their original purposes are reinterpreted through the artist’s hand. The lingering traces of dismantled functions make room for new ones to emerge. This is not a simple juxtaposition of elements, but a process through which functions are transferred. When one material relinquishes its functional identity, another fills the void, giving rise to a new order that did not previously exist.

This process resembles the way layers of time lean upon one another to generate new cultures. Tradition and contemporaneity, nature and industry, memory and sensation do not merely coexist in separation. Instead, they traverse one another’s boundaries and awaken latent meanings. The resulting furniture transcends its original purpose of use and is redefined not by what it was made for, but by what it can become. It exists as an object that questions its own mode of existence.

Byungsub Kim’s exhibition centers on this question. Through the tension that arises between the temporal flows embedded in materials, the traces of abandoned functions, and newly assigned roles, the artist quietly yet powerfully demonstrates that function is not fixed. Rather, it can be reconstructed and reborn through relationships.

Photo (c) SONGZIO, Younghyun Lee