HIVE ART FAIR 2026

LEE & BAE is profoundly pleased to present Hyeryun Jung’s seminal work, Living like Water, at the inaugural edition of the Hive Art Fair. By intersecting and visualizing water pollution datasets with virtual media, this oeuvre operates as an experiential inquiry that interrogates the contemporary ecological crises confronting humanity and the natural world. The title of the work borrows from Laozi’s philosophical doctrine of shangshan ruoshui (上善若水, "The highest efficacy is like water"), which posits the necessity of reverting to the primordial and intrinsic states of human and natural existence. Through this conceptual framework, the artist endeavors to transcend a superficial apprehension of water, thereby facilitating a profound ontic reflection upon the foundational roots of being. Water, the quintessential matrix of life, has paradoxically mutated into an existential threat to our survival, exacerbated by unbridled industrial expansion and anthropogenic environmental degradation. Within the exhibition space, viewers are invited to empirically gauge pollution levels at specific geographical coordinates via a localized hydrological map. This empirical data is subsequently transmuted into an array of sublime, organic moving images projected onto a monumental circular screen suspended above the gallery. Within this virtual cosmos, the simulated organic matter perpetually undergoes processes of synthesis and decomposition, orchestrating its own algorithmic laws and synthesizing an emergent structural order for survival. This generative process serves as a critical critique, elucidating the hubris of human rationality and technoscientific determinism, which fail to unilaterally resolve or regulate the complex exigencies of the planetary ecosystem. Ultimately, the work compels the spectator to confront the unsettling reality that humanity has already crossed the threshold into uncharted ontological territories—evoking the paradigms of the Anthropocene and the Chthulucene.