Soko Hwang's 'Flesh of Vessel' Examines Body and Control in London
Soko Hwang's 'Flesh of Vessel' Examines Body and Control in London
South Korean artist Soko Hwang is presenting a new multi-media exhibition titled 'Flesh of Vessel' at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning in London. The show investigates themes of bodily domination, order, and resistance through sculpture, installation, and moving image.
South Korean artist Soko Hwang is presenting a new multi-media exhibition titled 'Flesh of Vessel' at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning in London. The show investigates themes of bodily domination, order, and resistance through sculpture, installation, and moving image.
The exhibition explores the desire to perpetuate order through the domination of bodies and the struggle of flesh that refuses subjugation. Ships, gardens, collections, and zoos emerge as vessels that transport, classify, and regulate bodies. These structures construct a utopian garden, an image of paradise where time is taxidermied even as finite bodies are continuously transformed.
Across sculpture, moving image, and installation, the exhibition juxtaposes maritime hulls, architectural elements of Victorian glasshouses, garden design diagrams, Wardian cases, cabinets of curiosities, plant growth processes, myths of Daphne and werewolves, and cultural iconography. Through the montage of fragmented images and myths, different temporalities conflict, provoking metamorphosis that exposes tensions between constraint and movement.
Within these forms, the boundaries between flesh and vessel become ambiguous, while relations of domination and resistance are unsettled. Chaos emerges as bodily transformation alters structures of possession. The work asks whether bodies can transcend the boundaries that constitute them.
Soko Hwang lives and works in Helsinki and Seoul. His practice explores fractures between different temporalities through the montage of images, myths, memories, and materials, examining tensions among bodies, objects, and established systems of knowledge. Working across moving image, photography, sculpture, performance, and installation, his works engage with dominant narratives, transforming them by bringing historical, symbolic, and material forms into conflict.
The exhibition is located at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, Railton Road, London, SE24 0JT.
S.Jones--MC-UK
