Ecology is often understood through distinctions: natural versus artificial, organic versus technological, human versus environmental. Tender Harmony: Interwoven Reflection, a new exhibition at Seoul Botanic Park, challenges those boundaries, presenting the contemporary ecosystem as a web of interconnected relationships where each element exists in dialogue with the others.
Running through May 16, 2027, the exhibition extends across the greenhouse, Theme Garden, Project Hall 2 at the Plant Culture Center and Magok Cultural Hall. Rather than occupying a traditional gallery setting, the works are embedded within the botanical garden itself, transforming the site into a space where living organisms, built environments and artistic interventions coexist.
Four contemporary artists — Goo Gijeong, Um A-Long, Lee Jiyeon and Jang Hanna — approach this theme through distinct visual languages, ranging from large-scale installation and public art to immersive digital media. Together, their works examine how ecological balance emerges not through separation, but through interaction, adaptation and mutual influence.
Inside the greenhouse, Jang Hanna's New Rock Inuksuk and related works from the New Rock series envision synthetic materials as part of future geological landscapes. Plastics and other manufactured substances appear transformed into stone-like formations, collapsing conventional distinctions between natural processes and human-made matter.
In the Theme Garden, Um A-Long's public installations Things That Flow Through One Another and Moving, and Moving Again foreground communication and collective presence. Through participatory engagement, the works consider how relationships are formed through movement, exchange and shared experience within public space.
Lee Jiyeon's Stained Rainbow Forest 7, installed in Project Hall 2, uses reflection and shifting light to create a constantly changing visual environment. The large-scale work emphasizes perception as a dynamic process, shaped by the viewer's movement and position within space.
At Magok Cultural Hall, Goo Gijeong presents Every Microorganism Moves Subtly in Its Own Rhythm, an immersive media installation that combines imagery of plants found throughout Seoul Botanic Park with generative AI-created visuals. The work proposes a speculative ecology in which biological and digital systems exist within the same evolving environment.
Docent-led tours will begin in August, offering visitors additional insight into the exhibition's themes and artistic approaches through regularly scheduled guided programs.
Rather than presenting nature as a passive backdrop, Tender Harmony: Interwoven Reflection frames ecology as an active network of relationships shaped by biological, social and technological forces. Across the botanical garden, the exhibition invites visitors to consider coexistence not as a fixed state, but as an ongoing process of exchange, adaptation and reflection.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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