Intan Kwak

 

▷ How did your current body of work begin?
My sculptures almost always begin with kneading clay directly by hand to build form and mass, which is why tactility comes through so strongly in them. The real turning point was the COVID-19 pandemic. At a time when most exhibitions were held remotely, I worked, if anything, in ways that made materiality stand out even more. The more my works were exhibited and consumed as images, the more complex my sculptures’ forms and surfaces became, their undulations ever more pronounced. Early on, I cast the human body in traditional materials such as plaster, cement, and metal, but in recent years I have been building forms more quickly and spontaneously in resin clay. My constant concern is to convey to viewers the power of sculpture made of physical matter.

 

▷ In effect, sculptures of strong materiality are being exhibited virtually.
At COEX, countless works are on view in physical form. My work will exist virtually somewhere among them, and from the viewer’s perspective, that may in fact feel all the more rare. The original is elsewhere—but precisely because of that, I hope viewers will grow curious about the work and want to seek it out.

 

 

 

 

▷ What kind of work is ‘Movement 4’, the piece on view?
It was made in the contactless environment of the pandemic. The frustration and helplessness I felt then were magnified, mutation-like, into a sculpture of dense materiality that demands to be confronted in person. As the title suggests, it is also a work in which the body’s writhing sensation is heightened to an extreme. A few years on, in a place where countless works gather, this sculpture is exhibited once again—virtually. It would be interesting if viewers, true to the title, moved their own bodies and found themselves curious about the actual original.