Maya Lin, Marble Han River Dam, 2022. Glass marbles and adhesive, 180.3 x 274.3 x 2.5 cm. Courtesy Pace Gallery.
Pace Gallery presents an exhibition of work by artist, architect, and environmental activist Maya Lin at its recently expanded arts complex in Seoul. On view from January 20 to March 11, the presentation, titled Nature Knows No Boundaries brings together new and recent installations and sculptures emblematic of the artist's style. The exhibition, which marks the artist's first solo show in Korea, focuses on Lin's longstanding artistic investigations of water and her ongoing environmental activism.
Maya Lin, White Fracture, 1994. Embossed paper, 75.9 x 57.2 cm, Series of 5. Courtesy Pace Gallery.
Maya Lin, Dew Point 8, 2007. Blown glass, 10.2 x 182.9 x 243.8 cm. Courtesy Pace Gallery.
Lin—who is known for her critical engagement with notions of site and place through a multidisciplinary, ecologically minded practice— rose to prominence in the United States after winning a nationwide design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 1982. Other major public commissions by the artist include the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, created in 1989, and the Women's Table at Yale University, completed in 1993. In 2021, Lin presented her acclaimed public installation Ghost Forest, which comprised 49 towering Atlantic white cedar trees, in New York's Madison Square Park. The artist, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Barack Obama in 2016, has been commissioned to create a sculpture for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, expected to open in 2025. Most recently, she was chosen to design a new performing arts studio building for the Fisher Center at Bard College in New York state. In 2022, TIME magazine named Lin one of the year's most influential people.
Maya Lin, 52 Ways to See the Ocean, 2008. Richlite, 8.9 x 65.4 x 49.5 cm. Courtesy Pace Gallery.
Maya Lin, Pin Gang - Imjin and Han, 2022. Stainless steel pins, 266.7 x 188 x 3.8 cm. Courtesy Pace Gallery.
Lin's exhibition at Pace's Seoul arts complex features several of her sculptural, topographical studies of rivers, which she began producing in 2007 as meditations on the ways that natural resources defy and transcend human constructs—namely, imposed borders separating nations and states. The artist's understated but deeply resonant sculptures of water and bodies of water merge the past and present, situating the climate crisis within the arc of natural history. Lin's show in Seoul includes her new recycled silver work Silver Tigris & Euphrates Watershed (2022) alongside Pin Gang - Imjin and Han (2022), created with stainless steel pins, and the glass marble piece Marble Han River Dam (2022), both of which centre on the movements and makeup of the Han River, an important body of water in Korea. These sculptures, whose materials mimic the visual and textural traits of water, reflect the delicacy of line drawing in their elegant and elaborate contours. Lin's sculptural rivers also exemplify her ability to experiment with and use varied media in her work. Among the other works in the presentation are Dew Point 8 (2007), a lyrical blown glass sculpture, and 52 Ways to See the Ocean (2008), a Richlite sculpture that seems to undulate and shape shift as viewers navigate around it. Lin brings questions of scarcity, accessibility, and climatic precarity to the fore of these dynamic sculptures, which will be displayed across the gallery's walls and floors.
About the Exhibition
Dates: Jan 20 – Mar 11, 2023
Venue: Pace Gallery Seoul
Address: 1F, 267 Itaewon-ro Yongsan-gu, Seoul
Courtesy Pace Gallery.
