Artist Shin Ki Woun has developed a multidisciplinary practice encompassing video, installation, and performance, grounded in a background in sculpture and philosophy. His work is distinguished by its exploration of time and materiality as tools for dismantling structures of authority, symbolism, and memory, inviting viewers into a sensorial and reflective mode of thought. Based between Seoul and Daegu, Shin presents his first solo exhibition in the United States with Illusion of Permanence in New York.
Gallery Chang New York opened Shin Ki Woun’s solo exhibition Illusion of Permanence on August 7.
The exhibition brings together, for the first time in New York, a range of works—from Shin’s representative projects examining the erosion of time, matter, and power, to his latest works documenting the demolished interior of a former Chase Bank branch in Middletown, USA.
The exhibition title, Illusion of Permanence, exposes the fiction and instability inherent in the concept of “permanence.” Over extended durations, Shin Ki Woun wears down materials or dismantles symbolic objects to reveal how emblems of authority and institutional power—things often believed to endure indefinitely, such as coins, clocks, chess pieces, and even the remnants of a demolished bank—can in fact be easily disintegrated and erased.
On view are video works capturing the slow abrasion of a coin’s surface, installation works documenting the gradual erosion of metal sculptures, and experimental video pieces that physically and visually overturn the notion of “endurance” and continuity.
Shin Ki Woun describes his practice in his artist’s note:
“I use time as a tool to scrape the surface of power, reducing it to dust.
Permanence is not a reality, but a structure of belief.
By slowly wearing down symbolic objects—portraits of those in power, currency, and chess pieces that signify hierarchy and force—I reveal how easily they can disappear.
This process is not merely destruction, but a ritualistic act that asks viewers to consider both the durability and fragility of belief itself.
By juxtaposing the speed at which images vanish in the digital age with the illusion of material permanence attached to authority, I contemplate new forms of memory.”— Shin Ki Woun
Shin Ki Woun’s solo exhibition Illusion of Permanence runs through August 12 (local time) at Gallery Chang New York.
Founded in New York in 2019, Gallery Chang is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to presenting internationally influential artists while engaging with their artistic trajectories from a long-term perspective. In 2023, the gallery established its flagship space on West 55th Street in Manhattan, strategically located near major cultural institutions such as MoMA, Carnegie Hall, and New York City Center. Since then, Gallery Chang has expanded to additional spaces in Midtown New York (C2), Englewood, New Jersey (C3), and Seoul (C4), and now operates across four cities with active curatorial programs and community-based projects.
