The contemporary artist Hong Seung-Hye presents her solo exhibition On Stage as part of IMA Picks 2021, held at the Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea, from November 19, 2021. As the museum’s annual project exhibition, IMA Picks 2021 highlights works by Hong Seung-Hye (b. 1959), Lee Eunsae (b. 1987) and Yun Suknam (b. 1939)—three female artists from discrete generations who have each inspired continuous discourse and shifts in the landscapes of the local and international contemporary art scenes. Each artist is designated a space within the museum’s galleries to showcase her work. Hong, who has spent decades constructing a unique practice that traverses between two-dimensional and three-dimensional works by combining and assembling the “pixel”—the basic unit of computer programming—embraces the role of a producer and director, showcasing a comprehensive span of her artistic vocabulary. 

Installed on the second floor of the museum, On Stage is a “stage” founded on the pixel, sporadically intervened by miscellaneous elements such as floors, walls, a circular stage, furniture, and posters. Hong utilizes this space to show one of her video works alongside five sculptures created by four sculptors who in the past were her students, and currently are her collaborators. The exhibition features aspects of a performance, inviting five performers—each identified as “the artist,” “the voice actor,” “the audience,” “the princess,” and “the lover”—who occupy the stage in the form of moving sculptures. On stage, their presence constructs a landscape where art intertwines with life, delivering Hong’s message that “art can touch upon the mundanity of everyday life, and that we can thus forge a collective world in which we all foster change.” Hong’s works, which derive from the organic form of the pixel, brings forth a new reality interweaved with abstract art, where various challenges exist relative to the space in which the works are placed. On stage runs through February 6, 2022, featuring performance sessions between 1pm to 5pm every Saturday.