ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL presents a solo exhibition by UM Tai-Jung (b. 1938), titled World Worlds, from June 18 (Wed) to August 2 (Sat) 2025. Featuring 27 works, including rarely exhibited sculptures from the 1970s, as well as new sculptures, paintings, and drawings, the exhibition delves into UM’s artistic universe and philosophy. His sculptures go beyond the mere shaping of forms or materials, becoming an artistic method that reveals the world and truth, inviting profound contemplation on the essence of existence, beauty, and the meaning of “dwelling.” UM’s artistic practice explores existence as a living structure in which objects and people, time and space, continuously intersect within a space of unique order. Engaging deeply with the materiality of metals such as iron, copper, and aluminum, he infuses his works with a sense of temporality, spirituality, and existential depth. In his early career, he was drawn to the raw materiality of iron, producing intense iron sculptures, and has since explored the diverse properties and forms of various metals. In particular, he has focused on the sculptural potential of copper, bronze, and aluminum to express meditations on space and time. UM’s work evokes poetic and meditative spaces, transcending simple forms to open up entire worlds and form a contemplative realm where humans may dwell. His practice encompasses Eastern philosophy, traditional views of nature, and cosmology, achieving a profound harmony between material and spirit.

Exhibition Theme

UM Tai-Jung’s solo exhibition World Worlds is a philosophical practice that explores how the world and truth are revealed through sculpture. The exhibition’s title borrows from Martin Heidegger’s proposition, “The world worlds,” which understands the world not as a fixed entity, but as a living field that constantly emerges and is formed through the relationships between humans, objects, time, and place. UM densely embodies this concept within the sculptural form, pushing beyond mere visual shapes to activate sculpture as a revelation of being amid the tension between concealment and disclosure in the earth and the world. His sculptures deeply engage with the materiality of metal to construct an open space where existence arises and thought resides—a world unto itself. This exhibition demonstrates that sculpture can mark both the beginning of a world and the unveiling of truth, offering viewers a chance to experience the possibilities of thought and dwelling through sculptural presence. UM’s practice creates meditative spaces and expands into an artistic pursuit imbued with Eastern philosophy and ontological reflection.

Venue
ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (85 Yulgok-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea 03058) B1F, 1F, 3F

Artist
UM Tai-Jung

Exhibition Dates
Jun 18 – Aug 2, 2025

Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 6 PM

Website
https://www.arariogallery.com

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/arariogallery_official/

Contact
info@arariogallery.com

About Artist

UM Tai-Jung is a leading figure of the first generation of contemporary abstract sculptors in Korea, having pursued his artistic path in the field of sculpture for over 60 years since the early 1960s. After graduating from the Department of Sculpture at Seoul National University, he further deepened his theoretical and practical understanding of sculpture at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK. From 1981 to 2004, he served as a professor in the Department of Sculpture at Seoul National University, where he established a distinctive body of work centered on metal sculpture. He has received numerous accolades, including the Prime Minister’s Award at the 16th National Art Exhibition (1967), the Grand Prize at the Korean Art Grand Exhibition (1971), the Kim Sejoong Sculpture Award (1989), and the Lee Mireuk Award (2012). UM has held major solo exhibitions at the Georg Kolbe Museum (Berlin, Germany, 2005), Sungkok Art Museum (Seoul, 2009), ARARIO GALLERY (Seoul and Cheonan, 2019), and ARARIO MUSEUM in SPACE (Seoul, 2022). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at major institutions in Korea such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeongnam Art Museum, Pohang Museum of Steel Art, and Soma Museum of Art. Internationally, he has exhibited at the São Paulo Biennale (Brazil, 1973 and 1975) and Frieze Sculpture London (UK, 2019). His works are installed in prominent public spaces including Seoul Olympic Park (Korea, 1988), Dubrova Sculpture Park (Croatia, 1990), Incheon International Airport (Korea, 2002), and the Prime Minister Public Hall in Berlin (Germany, 2002). UM Tai-Jung’s works are housed in major Korean collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Pohang Museum of Steel Art, Leeum Museum of Art, and ARARIO MUSEUM.

Artist Writings 

World Worlds

“Such setting up is erecting in the sense of dedication and praise. Here ‘setting up’ no longer means a mere placing. To dedicate means to consecrate, in the sense that in setting up the work the holy is opened up as holy and the god is invoked into the openness of his presence.”

– Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art

To create a sculpture is to establish a world. But what kind of world is it? The essence of a world lies not in a mere collection of things, whether countable or uncountable, familiar or unfamiliar, that simply exist before our eyes.

‘World Worlds’. Such a world is one in which we exist more fully, as if we were at home and completely at ease within it. The World is always non-objective, and it is something to which we inherently belong. A stone has no world. Plants and animals, like stones, do not possess a world. Rather, they belong to the silent encroachment of the surrounding environment to which they are bound. In contrast, human beings dwell within the open expanse of beings, and therefore possesses a world. That is to say, the “world worlds”. As the world worlds, it gathers into itself a holistic space from which the grace of the gods may be granted or withheld, a totality in which preservation takes place.

The very existence of a sculpture opens up an expansive space. In this context, to “open up” means to freely offer a clearing within the open realm, and in doing so, to establish that clearing within the sculpture’s overall character. Through the sculptural work, a world is established. Thus, through sculpture, the open space of a world is brought into presence.

Metal (aluminum) arrives at gleaming brilliance, color at radiance, sound at resonance, and word at speech. In the glimmering brilliance of aluminum’s supple materiality, in the brightness and shadow of color, in the echo of sound, and in the naming power of words—when all of these return to themselves and assert themselves—presence is revealed.

As the artwork returns there—into itself—filling itself, what emerges is what we call earth. The historical human grounds their dwelling upon the earth and within it, as a way of inhabiting the world. By establishing a world, sculpture thrusts the entire earth into the open clearing of that world, and therein firmly anchors the earth.

Sculpture lets earth be, as earth.

A sculptural work that builds a world and sets forth the earth becomes a site of strife. In this clash of opposing forces, the disclosure of beings as a whole – that is, the truth – is brought forth. 

“One of the places in which truth happens is the work of art”

Essay

Um Tai-Jung’s Theory of Sculpture:

The Poetry of Liberated Matter That Forbids Delusional Escapism

Sim Sang Yong (Professor, Seoul National University; Ph.D. in Art History)

Art and Destiny

What must we see—in humanity, and in the world? First, we must recognize the ascent, the uphill path of life, as we pass over a ridge—what Albert Camus called a “hill.” The name of this hill is “destiny.” Why a hill, and why an uphill path? Because the “answer” to tragedy and misfortune still remains, and will likely remain forever, unresolved. In Camus’ words, life is a journey undertaken in the absence of metaphysics. “Destiny is nothing more than a blind, inhuman force to which we endlessly challenge ourselves with our bodies—without any metaphysical foundation.” At the core of this challenge lies art. All art is a statement and attitude toward the uphill path of “destiny” that the artist undergoes and approaches.

There are two conditions—or more precisely, two contradictions—that compel contemplation of destiny. One is a metaphysical contradiction that continuously strains between necessity and goodness, between the daily existence and the ultimate, yet cannot resolve itself. The other is a contradiction embedded in history, captured in the following assertion: “Even refrigerators, televisions, and rockets shot to the moon have not succeeded in making gods of human beings… Old conflicts may have vanished, but in their place, new ones have emerged—perhaps even more severe.”

Art is the “reckless challenge” that throws itself into these two contradictions—metaphysical and historical—appearing endlessly new in form, though in truth always rooted in long-standing tensions. At the same time, this reckless challenge becomes a collective intelligence of awareness and action rooted in the belief that without such efforts, it would be nearly impossible to shine even a faint light on “destiny.” Is it impossible? Perhaps—but that is not a bad thing. “The impossible is a gateway to the supernatural; it is the door we must knock on.” Thus, art is the fierce struggle not to let destiny belong to the night. It is the impossible endeavor to pierce the darkness with an opening through which light from above might enter. This makes art the reason one does not need to choose a luxurious or honorable life, nor desire wealth or high status. The moment we give up on this endeavor, all that remains is regression—a boundary marked by the signpost that reveals the spiritual realm of art. Upon this sculptural theory, we must examine UM Tai-Jung’s world.

This is the fate of sculptural art in our era. The doctrine of speed and efficiency in the digital super-world has rendered sculpture heretical. Trapped in fast scrolling and clicking, the sheer volume of transparent data crowds out contemplation itself. As a result, the relationship between human beings and the existence of things is severely distorted. That distortion then infiltrates the senses and cognition within existence. Human senses and self-awareness are inherently physical and therefore intimately connected with the material world. While information continues to multiply, the space necessary for serious reflection is vanishing. People accustomed to search engines do not meditate. Knowledge that passes through no filter of “destiny,” knowledge that fails to attain wisdom, becomes nothing more than arbitrary bundles of fragmented and superficial information—an overwhelming flood.

We live in an age where the very proposition that “art is a space for serious thought” is mocked. Sculptors are relentlessly urged to convert into virtualists, hounded by the swollen beast of the digital age. Resistance has now become the essential condition for “simply remain as a sculptor”. A small number of sculptors insist to remain as “materialists”. They become aesthetic Amish or Mennonites, continuing a solitary struggle as guardians of an art rooted simultaneously in matter and spirit, in physical labor and immaterial thought—under the name of a world built solely upon faith and reason.

Few sculptors have borne the lineage of sculpture as consistently as Um Tai-Jung. The ultimate aim of art is to become free. And the freedom of art is the freedom to consent. That consent may lie in following a given path, or in breaking away from it. Yet it takes greater courage to stay the course which would bring even greater freedom. This is why UM Tai-Jung’s abstract sculptures, while continually evolving and traversing boundaries, have become ever freer.

Sculpture-Poem

Abstract sculpture, like abstract painting, requires its own unique mode of perception. UM Tai-Jung’s abstract sculpture is no exception. At first glance, it is like viewing language in an unfamiliar form—like holding a newspaper upside down. What one sees are strange, fragmented shapes of printed letters. Only when the page is turned right-side up do the letters form words, and meaning begins to emerge.

Um Tai-Jung turned to abstract sculpture early—already in the 1950s. Behind this awakening stood Constantin Brâncuși. The two share a path in renouncing all sculptural rhetoric—eloquence, ornamentation, and any elements meant to catch the eye. Yet Um’s abstraction took a different course from Brâncuși’s. His path is accompanied always by poetic resonance and rhythm, born from an inherent narrative implication. As a result, his world never ends in the obsessive pursuit of physicality alone. He refused—wholeheartedly—the cold neutrality of formalism, and imbued even the plainest geometry with the warmth of the earthly realm. None of his abstractions lose their warmth, and none culminate in cynical gestures hurled at the universe. This was already evident in Scream (1967), for which he won the Prime Minister’s Prize at the National Art Exhibition. Art historian Kim Youngna once interpreted the work as bearing the marks of “calligraphic strokes.” The interplay of horizontal and vertical, strong and weak, was extended further in his 1970s copper sculptures—contrasting the polished surfaces with rough, corroded textures.

Um Tai-Jung circumvented the false Cartesian dualism of “mind and matter” by adding the role of a bridge—leading from materiality toward poetry. Can matter be handled so sensually? He reaches even into the breath of matter. Matter comes to possess warmth. From within matter and space, he draws forth a language that is immaterial and non-spatial —a “sculpture-poem”, the cultivation of fusion aesthetics. What kind of poem is this? A poem about the “secrets hidden in copper plates.” A poem forged within a metal that is “gentle and soft in nature,” residing between strength and weakness. And a poem saturated with T.S. Eliot’s insight into the “mysticism of the East—a path of transcendent faith”.

In the foreword to Um’s solo exhibition at Hyundai Gallery in 1997, art critic Lee Jongsoong read his sculptures as “utterances of a transcendent existence.” This is an apt reading. Here, transcendence resolves the Platonic conflict between things and ideas. The statement “matter is evil” is a Platonic notion—rooted in Gnosticism or Manichaean thought from the Hellenistic era—that should have long been abandoned. Um Tai-Jung’s sculptural theory rises as a righteous corrector of such misconceptions. Matter is not the source of evil, nor is it something denied or severed from the soul. Matter is not a repository of rejected emotions and sensations, nor is it a prison for the soul. The dualism of matter and idea is as mistaken as the dualism of body and soul.

According to Keith Ward (1938- ), British theologian and philosopher of language, the soul and body are not two separate substances but two languages used to speak of the human being. Just as the brain and mind describe the same event, so too do matter and the immaterial describe the same event in sculpture. This is the ontological and aesthetic root of Um Tai-Jung’s “sculpture-poem.” For art to be a journey in which it cultivates the strength to renounce delusion, matter is essential. Without matter, art easily slips into illusion. But it must be matter liberated from Descartes’ dualism of mind and body. This liberation of the most material form of matter is precisely what Um Tai-Jung’s sculpture has accomplished. It is the reason we must look closely.

(Text and images courtesy of Arario Gallery Seoul)