Lee & Bae is pleased to present My Room is filled with Light, a solo exhibition by Seontae Hwang, on view at the Erarta Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, from June 25 to September 20, 2026. Utilizing glass as his primary medium, the artist encapsulates and explores the profound aesthetics of light and shadow. Hwang’s oeuvre—which uncovers the latent power of a reality hovering on the periphery of concepts, and questions the nature of being through a process of reconstruction—focuses not on individual images or narrative content, but rather on the object itself situated within a specific juncture of time and space. Through this exhibition, viewers will experience a latent space-time, embodied and reproduced by light penetrating a screen delineated with green lines.
The artist, who articulates the existence of an object through glass drawing, conducts a profound inquiry into the essence of the object itself, favoring the subtle indirectness of obscurity over overt clarity. Within his work, light is orchestrated not merely to render the physical form of an object visible, but to obliquely bring its sheer presence into relief. Concurrently, the inherent properties of glass—which asserts its own presence while simultaneously reflecting external objects—serve as a vital conduit for advancing the artist's conceptual intent. An object reduced to a minimalist line can scarcely be called a sensible entity; instead, it functions as an indexical signifier of mere presence—a testament to "there it is"—rather than a representation of realistic concreteness. Through this approach, the artist exposes the inherent fictiveness of descriptive representation, emphasizing that a sense of reality is not yielded by mere depiction. His work demonstrates a masterful compression, wherein a monotonous line drawing, devoid of rendered space and illuminated by a solitary light source, morphs into reality by acquiring material presence and continuity as a three-dimensional structure.
The homogenized, hazed surfaces found in the Space with Sunlight series strip the depicted objects of their realistic texture and volume. While the perfectly flat screen preserves the contours of these objects through supporting lines, it presents only immutable scenes detached from concrete reality. Yet, by introducing light to this planar surface and purging the light itself of any realistic texture, the artist allows the objects to dwell there intact. This experience of "the thing over there" defines the artistic universe of Seontae Hwang. It is a realm comprised not of overt revelations, but of the myriad latent elements that envelope objects—a world of pure intuition capable of sensing the invisible, cast in sharp relief against the light. Within a reduced space shaped by one-dimensional lines on a flat plane, reality evaporates, leaving a segment of lines exposed by the falling light. Although the remaining elements are shrouded in gray shades, they ultimately settle as corporeal objects. Thus, a monochromatic plane, stripped of any three-dimensional rendering, manifests as an abundant space—filling the atmosphere with light and attaining a profound structural depth. Transcending any realistic locale, it engenders a contemplative gaze toward the space, suspended in lonely, silent moments born of cold light and air.
