Hyeseul Song (b.1995, Seoul) explores the areas where the built environment and Nature overlap, utilizing photography, digital media, and sculpture. Inverting the intrinsic nature of forms and materials to invoke a sense of emotional attunement to the surroundings, her works reconcile the dichotomy of the two realms. She seeks out unseen networks in the world that are found regardless of scale and subject matter, and draws out prominent orders and systems. Every surface is a living skin with its history inscribed; her gesture of collecting footage of skins demonstrates her interest in layers, fragments, synthesis, and decomposition. Having studied architecture, she is moreover influenced by the concept of dwelling and land use.
Song extracts patterns and contours from a range of objects, including trees, rocks and bodies, as well as urban infrastructures and building components that are susceptible to the eternal forces of nature. Focusing on interdigitation, as in the phenomena of roots growing out from the concrete sidewalk cracks, she converts natural ingredients into artificial matters and vice versa. Reprocessing them through coating, mold making, and digital fabrication, her action of making mimetic substances is considered as an intervention; it is decided by the regulation of the artist’s intent, leaving the materials to perform by themselves.
Song employs a variety of digital softwares in her practice; once the data is actualized, the artifact of pixelation becomes an evidence of the modification and the presence of technology. From cave dwelling to high rise apartment, the growth of architecture has been a prominent symptom of earth, while it continues to mediate a body to the incommensurable. The diagrammatic, sectional, elemental, structural presentation is derived from her experience in architectural thinking. She perceives a flat surface as the ground; layers as stratigraphy; a clean cut as land division; a hole as extraction. Throughout her works, she aims to trigger a shift in understanding of space and human habitat in order to achieve the true meaning of dwelling.