Look beyond at 'To Hold, To Be Held'

South Korean artist Jeon Gi-ok invites you to look beyond what is immediately visible during "To Hold, To Be Held", which is running at Atelier 9 until Dec 20.

The exhibition explores the invisible relationships that allow things and people to remain.

The Bangkok-based multi-media artist brings paintings, sculptural installations and spatial works that examine ideas of support, interdependence, belonging, movement and the conditions that sustain existence.

Working primarily with waste cardboard, a material associated with transport, protection and temporary use, Gi-ok transforms ordinary and often overlooked surfaces into landscapes, architectural structures and thousands of hand-folded boats.

Once used to carry and protect objects, the cardboard becomes a carrier of another kind, holding traces of time, movement, labour and memory. Across the exhibition, landscapes lean upon one another in precarious balance.

Painted images dwell within cardboard boxes, partially concealed from view. Circular structures invite visitors to physically enter the landscape, while folding screens unfold painting through movement and time.

Elsewhere, thousands of small boats gather into collective formations, accumulating traces of the artist's studio practice.

Viewed from a distance, the installation appears as discarded material and only through closer observation do the individual boats begin to emerge.

At the heart of the show is the idea that to hold is also to be held.

Landscapes are held by the structures that contain them; structures are sustained through their relationships with one another; and boats remain afloat through the water that carries them.

The works invite viewers to consider the networks of care and connection that quietly support everyday life. What allows something to endure may simply be the presence of something else holding it in place -- even temporarily.

Atelier 9 is located at Yaowarat 1 and opens Friday to Sunday from 11am to 8pm and Monday to Thursday on appointment.

Email info@atelier9bangkok.com.