Four Art Sonje exhibitions open October 27: bodily sculpture, war memory and a sound play without projection
Haneyl Choi, Meiro Koizumi, Verticals and 2mc1dj open together in Seoul. Three run through December 27; the sound work ends December 6. General admission and the VR-inclusive option differ.
Art Sonje Center in Seoul opens four exhibitions on October 27, 2026, moving from moments when the body does not fully obey intention to war memory, sculpture’s verticality and a theater work made of sound without projected images. They occupy galleries, gardens and the basement Art Hall rather than four rooms of similar works. When planning a visit, the media and time required matter more than their shared opening day.
2mc1dj turns the Art Hall into a theater of sound-built scenes.
A body outside conscious control as a sculptural starting point
Haneyl Choi: Sleepwalking, titled 최하늘: 이갈이 in Korean, occupies Space 1 through December 27. After seeing the cross-section of his injured finger, the artist began exploring the body beneath the skin and rhythms that cannot be consciously commanded. Hypnic jerks, drunken lurching and sleepwalking exemplify the body and consciousness falling out of sync. The body here is not a stable, complete standard figure.
Published installation photographs show suspended and prone forms, wires and seemingly exposed structures in a white space, bringing support, gravity and vulnerability together. Choi primarily uses sculpture to address desire, social norms and self-perception, with a continuing interest in the meeting of individual interiority and external order. Look for what supports a form and what appears unsupported before dividing the works into normal and abnormal.
How does memory travel, and who owns verticality?
Meiro Koizumi: The Fire, an Archive in Space 2 also runs through December 27. The institution describes it as his first institutional solo exhibition in Korea. Charcoal, sculpture, three-channel video and VR address the afterlives of war and nationalism in postwar Japan. Memory is treated not as a fixed archive but as something moving between bodies, voices, materials and technologies. The published photograph of The Angels of Testimony places testimony and its retelling across different screens.
Meiro Koizumi’s The Angels of Testimony arranges testimony across screens.Verticals explores objects and their supports in The Ground.
Verticals extends across The Ground, Hanok Garden and Rooftop Garden, with seven artists asking how verticality in sculpture and architecture became coded as a metaphor for masculinity. Columns, points of support and bodily posture consequently involve more than formal language: they also raise questions about who is expected to stand firmly and whose body becomes a measure. It ends December 27, like the two preceding exhibitions, but its route involves different indoor and outdoor positions.
Give the ears ninety minutes before an empty screen
2mc1dj: Event Volume 3 at the basement Art Hall ends December 6, earlier than the other three. The collective comprises Heecheon Kim, Haryung Lee and Seungtaek Hong. The official description lists an approximately 90-minute work linking three stories before, during and after performances at Waits, a fictional underground club. Seated before a screen without projected images, audiences build scenes through dialogue, music, ambience and foley. The blank screen is a condition of the work rather than a fault while waiting for a film to start.
The center is at 87 Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, open Tuesday–Sunday, noon–6 p.m., and closed Mondays. The official page lists an all-exhibition ticket at KRW10,000 and an option including Koizumi’s VR experience at KRW15,000; general admission should not be treated as including VR. Consult the official visit and ticketing page. To hear the complete sound play, allow separate time for its 90-minute duration and the other galleries, and check that day’s playback and experience arrangements.
