Kukje Gallery is pleased to present Objects in Oscillation, a group exhibition of contemporary Korean photographers, in the gallery’s K1 and K2 spaces from June 9 through July 19, 2026. Focusing on the genre of still life, the exhibition brings together nine artists, whose works interrogate the photographic medium’s intrinsic modes of expression while questioning how one encounters and relates to objects. In an era marked by relentless updates and rapid consumption of digital imagery, the participating artists create works without relying on excessive digital post-production or AI-driven image modification. Instead, they produce images grounded solely in the immediacy of their own vision, sensory perception, and the camera’s optical technology.
Curated by Koo Bohnchang, the renowned artist, curator, and educator who has played a pivotal role in integrating photography into the fabric of Korean contemporary art, the exhibition convenes a cohort of photographers, including Koo himself, whose still lifes are also on view. Presented in the rear gallery of K1, Koo’s Object series documents a collection of empty boxes lined with satin material. These boxes retain traces of their former contents as negative imprints, and these traces call into question the relationship between presence and absence, center and periphery. This affectionate engagement with quiet presences is also manifest throughout the Collections series. Gathering and attending closely to objects encountered by chance, Koo photographs his subjects against minimal backdrops and subdued lighting, creating a setting in which each object is allowed its own story.
Featured in the same room are works by Chung Heeseung. Chung approaches photography as a state of hesitation, a suspension between life’s fleeting, accidental moments and the artistic attempt to transmute them into an inevitable image. In her new series Parallel Projection (2026), the artist offers a photographic translation of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem A Throw of the Dice (1897), unpacking reflections on the ontology of the photographic medium. Translating into visual imagery the poem’s mathematical exploration of chance and its abyss, Chung adopts subjects that evoke symbolic motifs and summon the unknown. In order to position the photographic image and the original text’s concept in parallel—one that progresses side by side without ever intersecting at a vanishing point—the artist employs “parallel projection,”* a technique that eliminates vanishing points entirely, utilizing a perspectival system known as an isometric grid. Oscillating between chance and necessity, Chung’s constellation of distinctive photographs bridges the specificity of the medium with a profound metaphysical point of view.
Other works in the exhibition cultivate an intimate dialogue with the minor and seemingly trivial elements of everyday life, allowing them to emerge in an entirely different light. Installed in the front gallery of K1, Jo Seongyeon’s series Become a part of something and A Complete Coincidence combine fragments gathered from urban peripheries—concrete shards, rebar, wires, mechanical components, and plant debris—capturing the novel possibilities latent within them. Rather than being the outcome of calculated staging, these scenes are closer to the product of time and affinity shared between the artist and the objects. Within this ephemeral equilibrium, the objects manifest an innate potentiality and vitality.
On the first floor of K2, the exhibition showcases Kim Sookang’s attentive engagement with objects inhabiting the quiet margins of everyday life. Through prolonged and meditative observation of stones, bottles, paper bags, and other mundane objects drawn from the artist’s immediate surroundings, the works reveal the subtle aura inherent in them. Crucial to this practice is a process known as gum printing, which imbues the images with a distinctive tactile texture. This intricate, manual process involves coating the paper with a pigmented solution, exposing it to light, and developing it in water—a cycle repeated multiple times to build rich tonal depths. Defined by this unique painterly materiality, these photographs illuminate the invisible interiority of objects with precise, calibrated weight.
While Kim Sookang expands the possibilities of the photographic medium through classical techniques, Kim Kyoungtae creates images that transcend the limitations of optical lenses by layering and compositing photographs. Incrementally advancing the camera toward the subject, the artist captures hundreds of frames and combines them through a process called “focus stacking.” This is a technique that merges the sharpest focal points of each shot to generate a clear image where every coordinate of the visual plane remains in perfect focus. Showcasing a representative use of this technique, the exhibited Brass Hex Nut (2016) series maximizes the texture of the familiar subject’s surface, while its triptych-like arrangement of three sequential frames visualizes the physical shift of the viewer’s gaze and focal point.
Park Chanoo also employs a process of layering to reveal lingering memories and the residues of accumulated experience. In this exhibition, he presents works structured after Chaekgeori, a genre of Joseon Dynasty painting in which the “finest” objects were placed on shelves to display one’s knowledge, taste, and values. While traditional Chaekgeori functioned as a pictorial framing of prized objects, Park reconsiders the notion of value not through commercial or material qualities, but through cumulative temporalities, as he juxtaposes everyday items in a similar process of display. Captured through a multi-perspective layering method, these objects resist any fixed hierarchy or singular viewpoint. By questioning contemporary systems of value through historical forms, his works invite reflection on how meaning emerges through the sedimentation of memory and experience.
Displayed alongside these works, Koo Seongyoun’s sugar series presents treasures and ornaments finely sculpted from sugar. The artist creates objects from variable materials and arranges them in still life compositions before photographing them. Her images transform these crafted objects into something deceptively real while simultaneously exposing the gap between reality and imitation, leading the viewer to suspend judgment. At once sweet, glittering, and transient, these photographs of sugar objects illuminate human desire at the boundaries between the real and the staged, permanence and transience, and the ideal and the illusory.
Meditation on this idea of “disappearance” continues on the upper floor of K2. Jung Jungho traces and documents the life of his grandfather, who was mobilized as a wartime laborer. In the course of his research, the artist encounters fragmented records and inaccessible sites; rather than filling the gaps of erased history with external information, he reinterprets them through his own contemporary perspective. He arranges and photographs collected objects—including shell casings, wire, rope, archival documents, and military photographs of his father—to reconstruct the lost history of an individual caught within the Korean War. The prolonged process of researching, collecting, and assembling becomes a means of connecting with forgotten lives, leaving the photograph as evidence of the entire process.
Zo Sunhi’s photographs explore absence and decay. Black Imago (2024–2025) is a photographic series in which withered flowers are coated in black pigment reminiscent of crematory ash. Covered entirely in black, the flowers lose their vitality and function, condensing into inorganic textures, while photography preserves this final state as a material record. In the Planet (2024–2025) series, decaying fruits are captured in their dissolution in withered forms that echo small planets.
Picturing the state of matter after life has exhausted its function, the artist records death not as an ending, but as a transformative moment that gives birth to another aesthetic state.
The diverse still lifes presented in Objects in Oscillation appear silent and immobile, yet beneath the camera’s gaze each pulse with its own rhythm and poetry. These photographs crystallize prolonged moments of attentive observation, in which the artists’ care and keen engagement reawaken the objects, allowing their time to unfold once more.
*Parallel projection: a perspective technique used to represent three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane by extending projection lines in parallel rather than converging them at a single point. Because there is no vanishing point, objects retain the same size and proportion regardless of distance.
**Isometric: a type of parallel projection in which the x, y, and z axes that structure space are arranged at equal 120-degree angles, forming a geometric grid.
About the Artist
Koo Bohnchang (b.1953) graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Business Administration before earning a Diploma in Photographic Design from Fachhochschule Hamburg in Germany. In 2025, he became the first photographer to receive the Samsung Ho-Am Prize, and he was also honored with the Presidential Commendation at the Korea National Culture and Arts Awards. His major solo exhibitions include Koo Bohnchang: The Look of Things (National Asian Culture Center, 2024) and Koo Bohnchang’s Voyages (Seoul Museum of Art, 2023). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2021) and the Museum of Photography, Seoul (2012). His work is held in prestigious permanent collections worldwide, including the British Museum in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Chung Heeseung (b.1974) received a BFA in Painting from Hongik University and both a BA and MA in Photography from the London College of Communication. She was selected as one of the four finalists for the Korea Artist Prize 2020 at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and has received the Excellence Award at the SONGEUN Art Award. Her major solo exhibitions include Faraway, so close (Goeun | Gibson Museum of Photography, 2025) and Inadequate Metaphors (Art Sonje Center, 2013). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as Ilmin Museum of Art (2021) and the Gwangju Biennale (2018). Her work is held in prominent collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Seoul Museum of Art.
Jo Seongyeon (b.1971) received a BFA and an MFA in Photography from Sangmyung University. Her major solo exhibitions include A Complete Coincidence (SPACE SO, 2021) and KISIKAM (Gallery Dam, 1999). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as the Daegu Arts Center (2024), Incheon Art Platform (2022), Wooyang Art Museum (2021), and the Nam-Seoul Museum of Art (2006). Her work is represented in the collections of Art Bank, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the Datz Museum of Art.
Kim Sookang (b.1970) received a BFA in Painting from Seoul National University and an MFA in Photography from the Pratt Institute in New York. Her major solo exhibitions include Wildflowers (Gallery Planet, 2024), Breath of Every Day (SPACE22, 2021), and In My Hand (Sungkok Art Museum, 2003). She has participated in prominent group exhibitions at institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2016) the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2009). Her work is held in the collections of Art Bank, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Kim Kyoungtae (b.1983) received a BFA in Visual Design from Chung-Ang University and an MA in Art Direction from the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland. His major solo exhibitions include A Finite But Unbounded Force (HITE Collection, 2024), Bumping Surfaces (DOOSAN Gallery, 2021), and Dropping to the Surface (Whistle, 2019). He has also participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2023), SONGEUN (2021), and Ilmin Museum of Art (2021). The artist was the recipient of the DOOSAN Yonkang Art Award in 2020, and his work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Seoul National University Museum of Art.
Park Chanoo (b. 1963) graduated from the Department of Photography at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Starting with Stone (Joong Jung Gallery, 2013), his major solo exhibitions include September 24, 2024 (Joong Jung Gallery, 2024) and Frame (Joong Jung Gallery, 2021). He has also participated in group exhibitions such as 2016 Art Gyeonggi Start Up (Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, 2016) and Encountering Happiness (Gallery Moiso, 2014). His work is represented in the permanent collections of Art Bank, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, the Gwangju Museum of Art, and Museum Art Plus in Germany.
Koo Seongyoun (b.1970) studied Indian Philosophy at Dongguk University before graduating from the Department of Photography at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Her major solo exhibitions include The time it takes for sand to become rocks (Gwangju Shinsegae Gallery, 2025), Un-vanishing (Sahng-up Gallery, 2024), and Candy (Trunk Gallery, 2009). She has participated in prominent group exhibitions, including the Daegu Photo Biennale (2025), the Gwangju Museum of Art (2019), and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2014). The artist was the recipient of the Grand Prize at the Gwangju Shinsegae Art Prize, and her work is held in the collections of Art Bank, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the Gyeonggi Museum of Art.
Jung Jungho (b.1981) studied Journalism as an undergraduate and received an MFA in Photography. His major solo exhibitions include Sacred Site (ARTSPACE BOAN, 2025) and Topography of Beliefs (Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, 2024). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Come Back Home (Photography Seoul Museum of Art, 2026), Coexist (Mittelrhein Museum Koblenz Germany, 2024), The Printed World (Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, 2022), and Conservator C’s Day (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju, 2020). His work is held in prominent collections, such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the Cheongju Museum of Art.
Zo Sunhi (b.1971) graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Clothing and Textiles and served as a professor in the Department of Photography and Motion Picture at Kyungil University for 16 years. Her major solo exhibitions include Frozen Gaze (Museum Hanmi, 2025), 姬: Cosmos Mea (New Spring Project, 2022), and The Painter’s Memorandum (Pak No-soo Art Museum, 2021). She has participated in prominent group exhibitions at institutions such as Ilmin Museum of Art (2022), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2016), and Art Sonje Center (2007). Her work is held in the collections of Museum Hanmi and the Amorepacific Museum of Art. The artist was the recipient of the Harper’s BAZAAR Fashion Photographer Award and the Fashion Journalist Award (Photography category) from the Fashion Group Korea Association.