A Moon Suspended Over a Garden, a Spinning Palm Tree... Ho-Am Art Museum's Unfamiliar Landscape [fn Art Snap]

[Financial News] An 8-meter-diameter 'moon' hangs over the garden, while the crown of an artificial palm tree spins beside a pine tree. The works installed inside and outside Ho-Am Art Museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, transform familiar surroundings into something unfamiliar.
The 2026 Art Spectrum exhibition, which opened on the 1st, will run through December 27, Ho-Am Art Museum said on the 22nd. Jointly organized with Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the exhibition is titled "There Is a Room and All the Radios Are Pointing Toward Different Frequencies."■Works Stretching from the Parking Lot to the GardenArt Spectrum began in 2001 to discover and support emerging Korean artists. Its scope of participation was expanded to Asia in 2024.
The first Art Spectrum exhibition held at Ho-Am Art Museum features 23 artists and teams from 10 countries. Of the 63 works spanning painting, video, architecture, music, and other disciplines, 26 were newly produced to reflect the museum's spatial characteristics.
SIDE CORE's 'Time Gate' is installed on the roof of the parking garage. It is a structure reassembled from Japanese parking-lot signs. The museum's exterior walls are wrapped in images excerpted from Yuichi Yokoyama's manga 'Plaza.'
Suzuko Yamada's 'Hanging Moon,' installed in the outdoor garden above the Ho-Am Café, is Art Spectrum's first architectural project. An 8-meter-diameter hemispherical roof hangs from the end of a single curved support. A thin yet sturdy fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) shell bears the load, allowing visitors to rest beneath it.
Korean American artist Rachel Youn's 'Parade Paradi II' features an artificial palm tree whose crown continuously rotates. Inspired by artificial palm trees at theme parks, the work revisits the 'exotic paradise' created by the tourism industry. Set against the surrounding real trees, its artificial movement stands out.
The two works engage with visitors in different ways. 'Hanging Moon' becomes a space where people can enter and linger, while the palm tree captures their attention through its repetitive motion. It is worth observing not only the sculptures' forms but also how one's body and gaze change in front of them.
■Encountering Traces of Labor and a Garden at NightThe phrase 'different frequencies' in the exhibition title evokes the differences in history and sensibility addressed by the artists. Indoors, memories of labor and disaster, as well as the relationship between humans and machines, unfold in distinct ways.
Ruofan Chen reveals the risks borne by workers in architecture and fabrication sites through the form of a collapsed house. The work is rooted in the conditions faced by furniture-factory workers exposed to dust. It turns attention to the production processes hidden behind completed buildings and artworks.
Lieko Shiga's 'Where the Night Leads' presents along a long corridor photographs of heavy machinery and other objects swept away by the tsunami during the Great East Japan Earthquake. Images of debris moved into the mountains by one person over several years fill the walls, conveying the passage of time after the disaster.
In new videos including 'Wheel,' Jisu Kim connects mechanical devices to her body and walks through Hee-won, the traditional garden, as it is shrouded in darkness. Watching her feet through real-time video transmission equipment, she moves forward one step at a time.
The garden encountered outdoors reappears indoors as video mediated through machinery. Comparing the experience of walking through the garden with the movements on screen highlights how the same place can be perceived differently depending on light and equipment.
General admission is 25,000 won and includes access to Hee-won, Old Stone Garden, and Muksiam.

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