Celestial Whisper
Seoul Museum of Art | SeMA
4 June 2024–5 May 2025
In her exhibition “Celestial Whisper,” Meekyoung Shin’s sculptural practice emerges as a potent counterpoint to the mythic materiality of Joseph Beuys, offering a fresh interrogation of substance, symbol, and the spectral in contemporary art. Where Beuys famously deployed fat as a shamanistic conductor of warmth and energy, Shin’s choice of soap as her primary medium introduces a complex dialectic of presence and absence, permanence and ephemerality.
Shin’s angels, hovering in a liminal space between the corporeal and the ethereal, recall Beuys’s conception of sculpture as a conduit for spiritual transformation. However, while Beuys’s use of fat was grounded in a personal mythology of survival and healing, Shin’s soap angels engage in a more nuanced dialogue with religious iconography and consumer culture. The artist’s initial inspiration from a fragrance named “Angel” points to a postmodern conflation of the sacred and the commodified, a tension that permeates her work.
The materiality of soap in Shin’s sculptures simultaneously evokes the purification rituals associated with angelic encounters and the quotidian act of cleansing. This duality challenges the viewer to reconsider the boundaries between the mundane and the divine, much as Beuys sought to collapse the distinction between art and life. Yet, where Beuys’s fat sculptures were often opaque and inscrutable, Shin’s soap angels oscillate between transparency and opacity, literally embodying the liminal state they represent.
The gradual erosion of Shin’s sculptures over time introduces a temporal dimension that resonates with Beuys’s interest in alchemical processes. However, while Beuys often emphasized transformation as a means of social and political change, Shin’s focus on the inexorable dissolution of her works speaks to a more contemplative engagement with themes of impermanence and transcendence. The scent of the soap, accessible only to those in physical proximity to the sculptures, further underscores the experiential nature of Shin’s work, creating an olfactory aura that echoes Beuys’s concern with the sensory aspects of his installations.
In her exploration of angels as beings that are “known yet unseen,” Shin taps into a rich vein of art historical and theological discourse. Her approach, however, is distinctly contemporary, employing the paradoxical qualities of soap to materialize the immaterial. This strategy recalls Beuys’s use of fat to embody abstract concepts, but Shin’s execution is more subtle, relying on the interplay of light, scent, and the viewer’s imagination to conjure the angelic presence.
Ultimately, “Celestial Whisper” presents a compelling evolution of the artistic concerns that animated Beuys’s practice. Shin’s soap angels – these ephemeral Ozymandiai – offer a nuanced meditation on the nature of constancy and continuity in an age obsessed with iterations and change.
