Surface Tension
solo exhibitionApril 8 - July 16, 2025
E1507 Gallery at Burkholder Agency
1507 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21231
exhibition images coming soon
Drawing and sculpture are often seen as distinct disciplines—one bound to the surface, the other emerging into space. Surface Tension dissolves this boundary, revealing a practice where drawing is not just a mark but an excavation, a sculptural act that carves, embeds, and reveals. Here, the artist’s hand moves between mediums, from the delicate pull of graphite on paper to the physical resistance of plaster and chisel. Lines are not simply drawn; they are sculpted traces, inscribed into material, carrying the weight of process, time, and touch.
Influenced by the Korean ceramic technique Sang-gam, in which designs are carved and inlaid with pigment, Hae Won Sohn’s works engage a subtractive approach to mark-making. Whether through the inlaid plaster drawings, like her diptych, Lid and Tray, 2025, or the poured and layered slabs formed from reclaimed material, see arose in his asteroid, 2025, each piece retains the marks of its process or its former life. The artist repurposes studio remnants—cast-off molds, broken shards, excess pours—folding them back into “new” work, ensuring that no element is truly discarded. Accordingly, the exhibition features works in their progression of forms with careful arrangements of works grouped based on pieces of shared material. Sohn’s cyclical studio process echoes the fluidity between two-dimensional and three-dimensional thinking, where form is not predetermined but discovered through material.
Through this lens, Surface Tension invites viewers to reconsider their assumptions about drawing, sculpture, and the spaces in between. By transforming material through both additive and subtractive processes, the works challenge the idea of a finished form, instead revealing creation as an ongoing act of discovery and renewal.
The exhibition encourages a slower way of looking—one that follows the rhythm of embedded lines, traces the relationship between mark and surface, and recognizes process as an inseparable part of a “final product.” Drawing becomes an ongoing conversation between hand, surface, and the shifting language of form.
- curatorial statement by Isabella Chilcoat