Image: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul has highlighted Shin Seong-hee’s 'Sowooju' in a short post by curator Park Hye-sung that focuses on the work’s unusual form and construction. The museum’s Korean-language text describes the piece as strange at first glance, beginning with a round canvas and then moving to what appears to be a field of repeated short lines arranged around the edge of the circle.
According to the museum’s description, those marks are not painted on. Instead, they are the result of the canvas ground itself being woven like a net. The post frames the work as an exercise in making and unmaking pictorial space, using the language of “a space of infinite generation” created by tearing and weaving together material. The emphasis is on process and structure rather than narrative or iconography.
The museum’s note positions 'Sowooju' as an object that challenges the familiar idea of a painting’s support. Rather than presenting a conventional rectangular surface, the work uses a transformed, circular canvas that changes how the viewer reads the image area. The repeated perimeter pattern, as the text explains, is not a surface decoration but a physical consequence of the woven support.
Shin Seong-hee’s work is presented here through the lens of close looking, with the curator’s brief commentary drawing attention to the tension between appearance and construction. The description suggests that the piece depends on that tension: it initially seems like a painted image, but the museum points out that its visual rhythm comes from the fabric itself.
No exhibition title, duration, or venue details beyond the museum’s own post are provided in the source material, so the available information centers on the artwork and the formal reading offered by the institution. The post is credited to Park Hye-sung, identified in the Korean text as a curator, and it is presented as part of MMCA Seoul’s art-note style content rather than a full exhibition announcement.
In the museum’s account, 'Sowooju' becomes a study in how a canvas can be altered to create a different kind of pictorial field, one in which the edge of the circle and the woven surface are inseparable from the work’s meaning. The post concludes by drawing attention to the canvas as net-like support, underscoring the material basis of the piece rather than any painted illusion.
