Art Sonje Center will present Verticals, on view from October 27 to December 27, 2026, across The Ground, Hanok Garden, and Rooftop Garden. The exhibition Verticals takes “verticality,” a core formal principle in sculpture and architecture, as its point of departure, questioning how the concept has historically been coded as a metaphor for masculinity. To stand, to be upright, to be tall, to erect—each of these expressions carries a vertical orientation. In sculpture, verticality may evoke the upright body or the monument; in architecture, it begins with the column as a fundamental element and extends toward structures that exceed the human scale. Across both fields, verticality has functioned as a formal language associated with ascent, authority, and power.

Verticals is premised on the idea that this notion of verticality is not a neutral or universal form, but a gendered concept coded as masculine. What, then, might verticality look like beyond the masculine? Featuring sculptures and installations, the exhibition presents newly imagined forms of verticality. By tilting, inverting, suspending, and dismantling the vertical axis, the exhibition explores the possibilities of different “verticals.” Through this, the exhibition moves from a singular “vertical” toward plural “verticals.”

About the Artist
GuNa (b.1982)
GuNa explores the psychological and physical state of bodily vulnerability through the materiality of sculpture. By confronting the limitations of the body, she poetically expresses a desire to transcend reality, delicately capturing the potential of the heterogeneous body while investigating its simultaneously static and dynamic movements. Through this, she seeks to capture scenes of the body that have long existed and are yet to arrive. GuNa has held solo exhibitions at Boan1942 (2022), Park Soo Keun Museum Pavilion (2020). She has also taken part in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2025, Seoul), SONGEUN (2024, Seoul), Buk-Seoul Museum of Art (2024, Seoul), Amado Art Space (2024, Seoul).

Minhoon Kim (b.1997)
Minhoon Kim regards sculpture not as a finished, self-contained form but as an ongoing process in which disparate entities enter into relation and build a state of balance. His work begins with marginal materials, such as discarded objects and severed branches, drawing attention to things that have been rendered obsolete or pushed aside by prevailing systems of social value. Through this, Kim steps outside a worldview centered on efficiency and exchange value, revealing the relationships and possibilities for coexistence that imperfect beings can form with one another. He has held solo exhibitions at The WilloW (2026), Hall 1 (2024), and Boan1942 (2023). He has also taken part in group exhibitions at the xlarge (2026, Seoul), Frieze House Seoul (2025, Seoul), d/p (2023, Seoul).

Lee Dami Dammy (b.1985)
Dammy Dami Lee is an architect, designer, and artist. She is also the principal of Flora and Fauna, an architectural practice based in Seoul and on the internet. Through plants, animals, objects, and buildings, she speculates on material modes of existence that animate space and relationships, as well as on the possibilities of architectural images. Her work reconsiders the architectural landscape through the lenses of new nature, gender, and ornament. She was named a 2025 TSK Teaching Fellow. She is also a founding member of the curatorial collective Yeo-jip-hap and co-authored Building Role Models: Women Talk Architecture (2018), and participated in group exhibitions at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, Korean Pavilion (2025, Venice), MMCA (2023, Gwacheon).

Leap Lee (b.1990)
Leap Lee creates figurative sculptures of the female body using materials such as clay, plaster, and steel. From the perspective of an Asian woman sculptor, my practice considers what the human body looks like today, where and how it might stand, and what constitutes a meaningful way to represent the body. The figures distribute their weight across multiple centers of gravity, continuously renegotiating their balance through shifting points of support. She has held solo exhibitions at Hall 1 (2023), SAPY (2022), WESS (2021). She has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Museum Head (2025, Seoul), ARKO Art Center (2024, Seoul).

Woojin Jeon (b.1992)
Woojin Jeon works with sculptural installations, bringing domestic objects into contact with industrial materials to take a whimsical approach to the disquiet embedded in everyday life. Having lived between South Korea and the UK, he is interested in how the conditions under which something is perceived as transgressive can shift across different social and institutional contexts. His work disrupts established relationships between objects, spaces and utilities. Jeon examines the arbitrary boundaries between danger and safety, hygiene and contamination, and intimacy and discomfort. Jeon has held solo exhibitions at Post Territory Ujeongguk (2020) and Gallery 175 (2019). He has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Art Sonje Center (2026, Seoul), KCCUK (2025, London).

Choi Goen (b.1985)
Choi Goen cuts, bends, and rearranges objects that often go unnoticed or are relegated to the margins, such as furniture, household appliances, and building fixtures and equipment. The objects in her work are also domestic objects that perform invisible forms of labor. Through mass-produced objects, Choi explores the social codes of an era that shape the members of society, while investigating the sculptural possibilities of transforming standardized systems and orders. Choi has held solo exhibitions at Amado Art Space (2022), P21 (2021), Audio Visual Pavilion (2018), and Kim Chong Yung Museum (2016). She has also taken part in group exhibitions at the 61st Venice Biennale, Korean Pavilion (2026, Venice), the 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale (2024, Changwon). In 2024, she received the Frieze Seoul Artist Award.

Hwang Sueyon (b.1981)
Hwang Sueyon views material as entities that hold and transmit layers of social experience, sensation, and time. Through sculptural relationships, she examines how materials, bodies, and social structures shape one another’s conditions, exploring the ways in which they affect one another through physical phenomena and shifts in sensation. Hwang has held solo exhibitions at G Gallery (2024), Arario Gallery (2024), DOOSAN Gallery (2019). She has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Whistle (2023, Seoul), Buk-Seoul Museum of Art (2022, Seoul), MMCA (2019, Gwacheon).

Go to Related Programs
‘Trans*Architectures’
– Date: Sunday, Nov 1, 14:00–16:00
– Venue: Art Sonje Center, 2F Meeting Room
– Speaker: Lee Dami Dammy (Artist), Woojin Jeon (Artist), Choi Goen (Artist)
– Moderator: QF (Kim Malgeum) (Curator)
– Description: Verticality in architecture begins with basic elements such as the column and has long served as a metaphor for monumentality and authority. The spaces shaped by this vertical order, then, can hardly be considered neutral; they may also be understood as presupposing particular bodies and gender norms. Drawing on the concept of “Trans*Architectures,” this talk asks how sculpture might offer new ways of seeing and experiencing space. Participating artists, Lee Dami Dammy, Woojin Jeon, Choi Goen join the conversation to discuss their previous works and share how they have interpreted the spaces of Art Sonje Center and developed their works in response to it. 

Plural Verticalities
– Date: Sunday, Nov 22, 14:00–16:00
– Venue: Art Sonje Center, 2F Meeting Room 
– Speaker: Noh Haena (Curator, ARKO Art Center), Lee Yeonsook (Rita, Art Critic), Yoonseok Lee (Architect), QF (Kim Malgeum, Ha Sang Hyun) (Curator)
– Description: No Haena, who curated Sculpture Journey: Up to Today (2022, WESS), considers sculpture as a symbolic form that embodies the experiences of women sculptors. Critic Lee Yeonsook (a.k.a. Rita) examines how minor and minoritarian perspectives take shape in contemporary sculpture. Lee Yoonseok explores personal and structural dissonance through space and considers how architecture might open up alternative possibilities. Kim Malgeum and Ha Sang Hyun, curators of Verticals, share questions and reflections during the development of the exhibition. Together with the three researchers, they discuss verticality in contemporary sculpture and architecture from a range of perspectives. The research texts developed in conjunction with the program will be published in the exhibition catalogue.

The Act of Raising: Women and Queers
– Date: Sunday, Dec 13, 14:00–16:00
– Venue: Art Sonje Center, 2F Meeting Room 
– Speaker:  GuNa (Artist), Minhoon Kim (Artist), Leap Lee (Artist), Hwang Sueyon (Artist)
– Moderator: QF (Ha Sang Hyun) (Curator)
– Description: Monumental forms have long been associated with masculinity. Verticality has taken shape through various expression of power—ascension, authority, transcendence, permanence, and representation—while contemporary women and queer artists reinterpret these associations through sculptural practice. Participating artists GuNa, Minhoon Kim, Leap Lee, and Hwang Sueyon join the conversation, focusing on how they approach space in the exhibition. The artists will share the process behind sculpture that bend, tilt, conceal, overturn, and entangle different forces.