CONTACT
Seo Young Chang
인피니티 풀 Infinity Pool | 2020 | 8’
Courtesy of the artist
Courtesy of the artist
Synopsis
Infinity Pool (2020) is an emulation of the ocean stripped of smell, taste, and texture. This non-sensory surface reflects the contemporary condition in which physical contact is gradually erased and tactile experience is replaced by the visual. The sirens within the work lure viewers to drift endlessly on the surface rather than colliding with rocks. Like an infinite sequence that converges toward a limit without ever reaching it, viewers neither encounter nor grasp anything; they remain only in a state of moving infinitely “closer.”
The liquid of the Infinity Pool does not flow into the lungs, does not wet the skin, does not seep into the body. Yet the world does not penetrate everyone in the same way. This environment, designed to appear safe and harmless, conceals the reality that is already encroaching upon the bodies and lives of some. The video quietly contemplates the paradox of a “contact” that promises extreme intimacy while leaving no trace, and asks anew how sensation and risk are distributed and blocked.
Seo Young Chang has explored the relationship between the body and time primarily through video installation. At the intersection of the natural temporality experienced by humans as organic beings and the technological and social temporalities that are artificially constructed, her work maps the terrain of feedback loops through which body and time mutually condition one another. Through wordplay, paradox, and metaphor, her practice loosely dismantles the ambiguous boundaries between the virtual and the physical, the inside and outside of the body, and life and death, drawing to the surface and making visible the unfamiliar sensations that have remained submerged beneath the ordinary everyday. Chang has held solo exhibitions at Space After (2025), Sindoh Art Space (2022), Amado Art Space (2021), and Doosan Gallery (2019), and has participated in curated group exhibitions at the Nam June Paik Art Center, GMoMA, SeMA, and MMCA, Korea.