The Order of Time: Hong Soun, Juergen Staack

SEOJUNG ART presents The Order of Time, a two-person exhibition featuring Juergen Staack and Hong Soun, running from November 15 to December 28 in Seoul.

We exist within time, living lives that both affirm and are affirmed by its passage. Time, which accumulates and transforms our experiences and memories, has long been a source of philosophical inspiration and a central theme in the exploration of human existence. In his book ‘The Order of Time’(2017), Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli overturns the conventional notion that time flows sequentially, proposing instead the relativity, non-linearity, and individuality of time. He suggests that time is not a primordial order but an aspect of our perception, emerging from the relationships between events and the experiences that arise from those relationships. This exhibition seeks to sensorially engage with the deep connections these two artists weave with time, focusing on how they construct its meaning through the unique characteristics of their respective mediums.

In Juergen Staack’s work, time is an ecological entity. The artist contemplates things that change according to the movement—or stillness—of time. Moiré refers to the fleeting visual errors that occur when specific patterns overlap on mechanical monitor screens. To transpose this interference phenomenon into an aesthetic tool, Staack arranges fabric within wooden frames and projects light from behind, inducing visual disarray. By presenting this often-dismissed distorted image as a new aesthetic possibility, he explores the beauty of anomalies and transience. While Moiré series captures the formality of irregular images within mechanical systems, his SOLAR COPY’series imprints ecological mutations within time. Using cyanotype techniques, he records the shadows of mutant plants that have appeared in the Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. The result is a subtle yet poignant trace of time that metaphorically documents severe environmental issues arising from global warming. In this exhibition, Staack’s direct experience of time emerges more distinctly through his works from Light Sketch. They allow viewers to infer the movement of time through shadows cast by sunlight illuminating objects. The poetic moment when shadows draw on an open notebook placed before a vase lingers only briefly before vanishing. Yet, by capturing this ephemeral beauty, the moment attains an eternal presence within our perception.

Hong Soun perceives time as a congregation of events. He does not confine painting to flatness but elicits diverse interpretations through variations in composition. His Over there..days narrates stories of different places occurring simultaneously. The artist photographs fragments of his ordinary daily encounters and transposes them onto the canvas, overlaying them with images of disasters and event sites from the opposite side of the globe, accessed on the same day via the internet and foreign news outlets. By applying and removing masking tape at points of overlap, he utilizes the interstices of the canvas three-dimensionally, sensing the blurred boundaries between reality and unreality. In Hong’s paintings, time appears to share common points, yet the relationships through which it is experienced and perceived are sharply divided. For instance, The tale of certain country discusses unresolved time. The artist expresses as overlapped paintings a modern photograph depicting slaves laboring at sea in Liberia and a photograph from a leisurely day when he strolled by the ocean. Though both share the common setting of the sea, their times spent there confront two entirely separate realities. His approach to sculpture aligns with this context. Hong’s sculptures are born from discarded objects drifting in places where events have occurred. By assembling collected objects into singular three-dimensional forms, he breathes new life into halted time. In this way, Hong leaves indelible traces of events that must never be forgotten, striving to record and remember those times.

Time manifests in myriad forms along its trajectories, making it challenging to define its essence clearly. Yet, as long as perception exists, time unmistakably flows through our lives. By tracing the different paths depicted by these two artists who share the common time of this exhibition, the audience will deeply experience the essence of time they convey.