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COLUMN

2021

Bamboo, Concrete, Lacquer

Seoul, South Korea

Certain forms seem incapable of disappearance.

Empires collapse.

Languages evolve.

Religions transform.

Yet the column persists.

Across centuries and civilisations, it continues to reappear in altered materials and altered contexts, carrying with it an architectural memory that remains immediately recognisable even when detached from architecture itself.

Column emerged from an ongoing series of material investigations into lacquer and its potential beyond traditional application.

The work begins with bamboo.

Thin strips were woven together by hand to form a flexible surface, recalling techniques historically associated with domestic construction and architectural partitioning. Individually fragile, the strips acquire strength through their relationship to one another. The structure depends not upon singular elements but upon collective tension.

This woven membrane was then shaped into the silhouette of a column.

Not a reproduction of a classical form, but a recollection of one.

A memory of architecture rather than architecture itself.

Traditional lacquer techniques often employ a mixture of lacquer and finely ground earth to create a dense material capable of filling gaps and strengthening underlying structures. For Column, Tae replaced earth with concrete powder.

The substitution was subtle yet significant.

Concrete, a material synonymous with contemporary construction, entered into direct dialogue with lacquer, a material historically associated with preservation and inheritance.

One belongs to the modern city.

The other belongs to centuries of accumulated tradition.

Combined together, both materials began to exceed their original identities.

The resulting mixture was applied throughout the woven bamboo structure, gradually filling the spaces between each strand and transforming flexibility into solidity. What had once resembled a membrane acquired the presence of architecture.

Lightness became weight.

Fragility became permanence.

The work occupies an uncertain territory between sculpture, architecture, and material experiment.

The column remains.

Yet everything from which it is constructed has changed.

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