The spring 2021 season at Atelier Hermès opens with “Other Feathers”, a solo exhibition by London-based Korean artist Joo Yeon Park. In her work, Park explores notions of otherness, drawing on her own experience of living abroad since her teenage years. The five new works presented in the gallery reflect upon this feeling of a “deterritorialised” identity through the prism of language – a demanding medium which, Park suggests, for all its promise can never allow for total understanding. The exhibition brings together ancient and mythological references in a hybrid environment that blends sound, sculpture, drawing and writing.  

Nahm Hyun offers an insight into his highly original form of contemporary sculpture in an exhibition whose title – “Burrowing at the Bottom of a Rainbow” – is at once poetic and programmatic. In his work, he adopts an approach that turns classical technique on its head: voids and forms carved into polystyrene are subsequently filled with materials that, once hardened, take shape from within. The polystyrene is then removed and the sculpture turned upside-down, resulting in forms that resemble urban landscapes or church spires. By crafting his moulds from the outside in, Nahm Hyun introduces an element of chance into his creative process: particular chemical reactions can occur that alter the nature of the casting materials. Through this singular approach, he composes miniature universes that suggest communication towers sinking into weather-beaten natural formations and which evoke both generalised surveillance and futuristic ruins – all rendered in a striking rainbow of different colours.