[Gallery Walk] Memories of Time Engraved in Light: Sangmin Lee Solo Exhibition

"Beautiful and Distant"
From the 6th to the 23rd at Gallery Sebin, Yongsan

Gallery Sebin, located on Hoenamu-ro in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, is holding a solo exhibition by sculptor Sangmin Lee titled "Beautiful and Distant" through November 23.

Sangmin Lee's 'Baekja Cheonghwa Moranmunho' (2025). Engraved glass, framed, 117.4×117.4×6cm.

This exhibition explores the gap between "visible beauty" and the "unreachable essence." Works that engrave life-sized forms of Korean traditional ceramics-such as Buncheong ware, white porcelain, and blue-and-white jars-onto glass possess a fantastical depth, as if summoning the spirit of vanished relics back into the light.

The traces of time engraved on the transparent medium create a "field of transparent time," where substance and insubstantiality, past and present, memory and emotion overlap. The moment viewers stand before the works, they may feel as though they themselves have entered into the glass.

Glass reflects everything, yet its essence remains out of reach. On this boundary, viewers are compelled to gaze into invisible time. The artist's glass reliefs are not mere restorations, but contemporary acts that revive the spirit of what has disappeared-an art of memory.

Sangmin Lee's 'Buncheong Sagi Sanggam Yeondangchom (Gong-an) Myeong Daejeop' (2025). Engraved glass, framed, 99×101×6cm.

A representative from Gallery Sebin stated, "Sangmin Lee's glass sculptures stand at the intersection of visual and temporal art," adding, "This exhibition is a meaningful occasion that explores the essence of existence through light, transparency, and the traces of time."

Sangmin Lee is a professor of sculpture in the Department of Fine Arts at Chung-Ang University. He studied fine arts at the ?cole sup?rieure des arts d?coratifs de Strasbourg in France and the Marc Bloch Graduate School of Humanities. For decades, the artist has established a sculptural language centered on the "aesthetics of emptiness," engraving the forms of vanished relics onto glass to evoke their absence through light and memory.