Discarded boxes become landscapes in Bangkok: Jeon Gi-ok’s To Hold, To Be Held at Atelier 9
Through December 20, cardboard, six-panel landscapes and hand-folded boats make creases and supporting structures part of the view. Visits Monday–Thursday are by appointment.
An opened cardboard box can become more than recycling: it can become a landscape to read. Jeon Gi-ok’s solo exhibition To Hold, To Be Held opened at Atelier 9 Bangkok in Chinatown on October 24, 2026, and continues through December 20. The artist uses discarded cardboard for paintings, sculptural installations and spatial works, turning a material once used to transport and protect objects into a surface carrying images and time. Rather than disguising cardboard as something expensive, the exhibition lets creases, tears and marks from previous use remain alongside new landscapes.
Before reading the cardboard, follow the image across its breaks
In the published artwork image, Landscape in formation (2026) consists of six upright cardboard panels set side by side. Mountains, rocks, trees and open areas appear across an ochre ground. The panels do not join seamlessly: the eye must cross the gaps to put the scenery together again. Try following a ridge or a band of mist, noting where it continues and where it stops. Exposed corrugations and worn areas interrupt a smooth reading and bring a usually overlooked supporting surface into the foreground.
Another artwork image retains large areas of brown paper, with openings exposing the inner layers around the edges and centre. Faint boat shapes and horizontal lines appear on the surface. Looking here involves more than identifying the subject; compare how intact areas and exposed structure distribute visual weight. Cardboard once protected another object, yet as an artwork it reveals its own fragility. The title’s acts of supporting and being supported can thus be understood through a tangible material relationship.
The cardboard’s surface alternates with exposed inner layers, while faint boat shapes appear across the brown image.
Landscape can be a structure as well as an image on a wall
The exhibition draws on East Asian landscape imagery while carrying pictures into boxes, shifting folded planes and spatial forms. In the blue artwork image, a small boat floats across a worn paper surface. A folded side means this is more than a flat picture board. Read the image on the front together with the thickness at its edge. Support is not a secondary element to conceal: it changes how a landscape stands and the angles from which a viewer can approach it.
A blue landscape and small boat extend across a folded cardboard structure.
The exhibition also gathers thousands of small hand-folded boats into collective forms, giving repeated individual labour another scale. Moving from how each boat is folded to how many boats gather together shifts the question from technique to relationships. It echoes packaging’s previous role in carrying objects through transport networks. The exhibition’s interdependence can therefore be read between people, but also among paper, weight, the ground and different forms of support.
Which visiting arrangements should you check in Chinatown?
Atelier 9 is at 9 Yaowarat 1 in Samphanthawong. Its official contact page lists info@atelier 9bangkok.com and +66 64 471 5334. The organiser’s event notice gives Friday–Sunday, 11:00–20:00, Monday–Thursday by appointment, with closure on public holidays. A venue panel on the same platform lists different hours, so confirm the day’s opening directly with Atelier 9 before travelling. A Monday during the exhibition is not a reason to assume you can walk in at any time as at an ordinary shop.
The space combines selected goods, an art gallery and fashion books, making materials and shopping part of the same Chinatown outing. Rather than assigning a fixed symbol to every crease, choose one work and look in sequence at its scenery, paper surface, side structure and supporting points. How these layers sustain one another turns the title into an observable question. Before visiting, consult the exhibition information and use Atelier 9’s official contact page to confirm appointment arrangements.
