Located in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, Sunhyewon is a site steeped in the history and tradition of SK Group, recently reopening as the group’s new research institute. To introduce this special place to the public and expand its role as a cultural platform, PODO museum has launched a new cultural program, “Sunhyewon Art Project 1.0.” The inaugural project presents an exhibition by Kimsooja, a world-renowned artist representing Korea.
This exhibition marks a special moment where the historical depth of Sunhyewon meets Kimsooja’s artistic universe, offering visitors a contemplative experience that transcends time and space. The central work, To Breathe— Sunhyewon, 2025, is a site-specific installation that transforms Kyonheunggak, a traditional Hanok building that retains the dignity of Korean architecture, into a whole piece of contemporary art. By covering the floor with mirrors, Kimsooja reflects the architecture, light, and viewers, dissolving boundaries between built structure and individual. This immersive space reinterprets the stillness of hanok into a sensorial experience where the past and the present, the space and being intersect. Even the seemingly fixed architecture begins to shift and flow as it blends with ephemeral light and reflections.
Notably, this is the first time Kimsooja’s To Breathe series has been installed within a traditional Hanok structure, adding symbolic significance to the juxtaposition between the work and the historic context of Kyongheunggak. As suggested by the title To Breathe, the piece captures the subtle movement of light and air within the tranquil beauty of the Hanok, drawing the viewer’s breath and footsteps into the artwork itself. As they walk across the mirrored floor, visitors find the architecture and sky unfolding beneath their feet—crossing boundaries between horizontality and verticality, interior and exterior, self and the other.
Artist
Kimsooja
Currently based in Seoul, Kimsooja (b.1957) is an international conceptual artist whose practice explores the totality of life and art, transcending distinctions of medium and form through works of painting, installation, performance, video, light, and sound. In the 1980s, she began to experiment with alternative modes of expression while contemplating the two- dimensional structure of painting, leading to a series of sewing works that revealed a dualistic order of vertical and horizontal as the foundation of the world structure, thus expanding the object of her artistic inquiry from the material to the non- material. Kimsooja’s resolute pursuit of the latter and adoption of “non-doing, non- making” as an aesthetic framework inform her longstanding engagement with various media and methodologies, driving her persistent questioning of art and humanity in conceptual, contemplative aesthetics and humanism.
Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and site- specific installations in major international museums, including Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2025), Bourse de Commerce, Paris (2024), Humboldt Forum (2024), Cisternerne / Frederiksbergmuseerne (2023), Cathédrale Saint-Etienne de Metz (2022), Wanas Konst
(2020), Traversées / Kimsooja in Poitiers (2019), Peabody Essex Museum (2019), Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Chapel (2019), Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (2017), Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2015), Centre Pompidou Metz (2015), Vancouver Art Gallery (2013), Crystal Palace of Reina Sofia Museum (2006), EMST, Athens (2005), Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (2004), MAC Lyon (2003), PAC Milan (2003), Kunsthalle Wien (2002), Kunsthalle Bern (2001) and MoMA PS1 (2001). She has been a part of numerous biennials and triennials, such as BienalSUR (2021, 2023), Documenta14 (2017), Venice Biennale (2013, 2007, 2005, 2001, 1999), Gwangju Biennale (2012, 2000, 1995), Lyon Biennale (2000), Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), Istanbul Biennale (1997), and Manifesta 1 (1996), The Fenix Museum of Migration in Rotterdam recently acquired her key work Bottari Truck – Migrateurs (2007–2009).
Artworks