Hong Myung Seop received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Sculpture at Seoul National University in 1976 and 1986, respectively. He held multiple solo exhibitions at home and abroad including de-titled at Stedelijk Museum Zwolle, Holland, in 1998; Horizontality at Arko Art Center in 2004; and Running Railroad at Cultural Center of Novi Sad, Serbia, in 2012. He also participated in various group exhibitions in and out of Korea including the 44th Biennale di Venezia in 1990; Border of Life, special exhibition at Gwangju Biennale in 1997; and SeMA Gold 2012: Hidden Track at Seoul Museum of Art in 2012. He served on the faculty of the Painting Department at Hansung University. The art of Hong Myung Seop is permeated by the Buddhist worldview that has fascinated him since his school years. Hong has long pursued complete liberation from all fixed values in art, describing the encounters between the artist and the work, and the viewer and the work as “trigger,” or Nidana, meaning “linked cause.” His art is based on the concept of “metamorphosis”, as a reaction to art’s traditional qualities of “eternal, permanent materials and forms,” a notion also demonstrated by his frequent use of such prefixes with connotation of changeability as “meta-,” “para-,” and “ana-.” His works of transient and changeable forms, mainly made out of fragile materials like paper, tape, ropes and the likes, reflect a cycle of life in that they all wear out and perish as time passes. His works, which are to be disposed of after exhibition, demonstrate the sculptor’s horizontal and nature-friendly attitude, as opposed to a sort of phallic and vertical tendency often observable in monumental art.
