“The most important sculptures of all civilizations are rather small. Almost all of them.”
- Alberto Giacometti (1942–1945)
Various Small Fires (VSF) proudly presents the fourth edition of THE UNBOXING PROJECT, an iterative curatorial project by Hyunjoo Byeon and Minjin Chae started in 2022. This exhibition brings together some of the most well-known and emerging voices in Korean contemporary art and is the American debut for many. In total, twenty-eight artists between the ages of thirty-three and eighty-nine made work for this project in response to a single prompt by the curators.
Before conceiving their individual work for the exhibition, each artist received an identical (11.5 in x 11.5 in) wall mounted pedestal from the curators, each packed in an identical box, also intended to house the entirety of the work. As a prompt, they were encouraged to approach the confines of the plinth as an autonomous exhibition space. The resulting works are diverse in material and formal approach as well as scale - despite the fact that the primary constraint for the project inherently limits their size.
Several works in The Unboxing Project are deeply rooted in personal and collective memory around their Korean identity. Choong Sup Lim, having moved from Jincheon, Korea to New York, projects his “in-between” identity by utilizing the sparrow in his work, identifying with the bird that adapts to urban environments by altering its communication to higher octaves. Kim Yun Shin employs birch wood sourced from Yanggoo, Korea, near her hometown in North Korea, to thread the needle between nature and a personal art practice.
Meekyoung Shin’s Toilet Project invites viewers to engage with sculptures that have been cast in soap and placed in museum restrooms for visitors to use. Transformed through human interaction, these objects are exhibited as new artifacts, blurring the boundaries between art and functional objects.
