Home > Culture > Arts & Design

Podo Museum opens first Seoul exhibition featuring Kimsooja

Published: 02 Sep. 2025, 19:12

SHIN MIN-HEE
[email protected]

A reporter looks at a bottari (traditional Korean cloth bundles used for wrapping and transporting belongings) artwork by Kimsooja at a press preview of the artist's solo exhibition, titled "To Breathe - Sunhyewon," at Sunhyewon in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 2. [YONHAP]

Podo Museum, a Jeju-based art museum owned and operated by SK Group, is holding its first Seoul exhibition at Sunhyewon in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Wednesday.

“To Breathe – Sunhyewon,” a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Kimsooja, brings together pieces across painting, needlework, installation and video, exploring themes of home, identity and humanity.

Featured works are the titular site-specific installation and “Detective Object - Bottari” (2023), an installation that reinterpreted the moon jar through the motif of bottari, or traditional Korean cloth bundles used for wrapping and transporting belongings. Podo Museum stressed the symbolic connection between “space” and “art” for this exhibition.

It is the 68-year-old artist’s first Seoul exhibition in a decade.

Sunhyewon is a hanok (traditional Korean home) that served as a longtime residence for SK Group founder Chey Jong-gun (1926-1973) from 1968 until his death. After undergoing renovation in 2022, the venue reopened as the Seoul branch of the conglomerate’s SKMS Research Institute.

“To Breathe – Sunhyewon” continues through Oct. 19. The exhibition is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays, free of charge. Reservations can be made on Naver.

Sunhyewon will be open from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday for Samcheong Night, part of Frieze Seoul’s late-night events of exhibition viewings, parties and performances to continue throughout this week.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [[email protected]]