Jiieh Hur, who presents her second solo exhibition at alter.ego, works across installation and sculptural practices encompassing objects, two-dimensional works, and sound. Drawing upon the material qualities of diverse media, she composes environments in which form and texture—charged with a kind of pure energy—interweave organically, allowing playful yet poetic intervals to circulate through the space. The works are shaped by her dexterous and diligent hands, guided by a refined sensibility and an assured sense of form.

The materials she chooses are those we encounter most easily in everyday life—familiar, ordinary things often overlooked or discarded. Piles of abandoned paper become pulp through her own process; wire, soil, wood fragments, and other modest substances are tested through repeated trials and experiments. Within the artist’s imagination and inner narrative, these materials arrive at their own completion, eventually acquiring a distinct external form and a language of expression uniquely her own.

What first captures the eye is, unmistakably, the unfamiliarity of the forms. For a moment, one becomes absorbed in the question of what the artist might have intended to depict. Soon, however, attention shifts toward the physical properties of what the forms are made of. As one follows the motion of the artist’s hands through the work, a strong sense of energy emerges—akin to the intensity of a child wholly immersed in the act of making, entering a state of self-forgetfulness where “making” precedes intention.

And yet, when stepping back to take in the work as a whole, another quality reveals itself. Shapes suspended from long, extended wires quietly hold their balance, calibrating the forces radiating from the material itself. In this still equilibrium there is something deeply meditative. Questions remain: the way form and material relate within the work, or the inner motive that allows disparate substances to settle into harmony. Even if one were to ask the artist directly, such questions may not be resolved with any clear answer. Still, it would be wrong to say that pursuing them—and attempting to reach an answer—is meaningless.

To make work is to gather accidental sensations and experiences and integrate them into necessity through countless processes, again and again. To encounter someone else’s work is, within the limits of one’s own perception, to build and dismantle provisional conjectures—repeatedly. At times, this encounter—one person making, another person looking—becomes a way of reflecting upon the self: an opportunity to register, examine, and recalibrate one’s own inner coordinates.