Summe im Augenblick 2010, installation,
expanded polystyrene, steel cable, nylon cord, ca. 15x4x5m

Ruin as Metaphor
About Min Jeong Seo's Installation SUMME IM AUGENBLICK at Bellevue-Saal
From the very start there was a clear goal. Min Jeong Seo wanted to blow up Bellevue Hall. Well, not Bellevue Hall itself, it is of coures part of a designated historical monument, but a reduced replica anyway. To reach that goal the whole of Bellevue Hall first had to be measured precisely and a styrofoam model had to be built thoroughly, scaled down to 62% of its actual size.

It was all made to later break the finished model apart, in such a way that the pieces and cracks suggest an explosion had happened. The result presents itself as an artificial ruin of Bellevue Hall. Long cracks and jagged gaps show the force of the assumed explosion. The cracked ceiling gives way for a look up to the actual ceiling of Bellevue Hall.
Her [Min Jeong Seo's] works distinctly create references to time, process, fragility and border zones. It's quite conspicuous how opposites connect in her work. Elaborately made things and the following act of destruction, being and non-being, duration and transition, life and death. In those works the process plays an essential part and represents once again a reference to time.



There are different ways for the perception and understanding of time. Time is a construct but also a factor governing our social life. In physics time can only be now-time, it simply is present. In contrast subjective experience of time may be very different. For example the sense of time while waiting for something or how time perception differs for younger or older people. As we speak of the past, the present, the future the meaning of life becomes part of the question. Where do we come from? Where are we headed to? In that context Min Jeong Seo points out the buddhist notion to understand time as a sequence of moments. Each point in time holds a certain meaning and represents a fraction of the whole. According to this conception the explosion tears a hole in time. It is not the form that got lost but time itself.

The explosion itself cannot be seen but only its effects. The instant of the explosion constitutes an annihilated fraction of time as well as the disintegration of that space in its previous form. The frozen mass of ruins represents an image of the incident, it reflects the energy of the explosion. In that sense the ruin of the hall conveys the idea.

- Ulrich Meyer-Husmann

A lifesize wedding dress made of porcelain. An ironic comment on the immensely material dream for happiness as manifested in princess-style wedding seen for instance in contemporary east-asian culture. At the same time it's a grotesque variation of porcelain kitsch in 1:1 scale. The overwhelming amount of the acclaimed "fine", "noble" and "precious" material breaks the relation between object and value. - Min Jeong Seo


Min Jeong Seo