Inertial Drift (2026)

Translated from the original Korean

Humans perceive objects through the lens of purpose. A pair of scissors is “something that cuts,” a bag is “something that holds,” and a monitor is “something that displays.” Grounded in this firm conviction, the reason for an object’s existence is entirely subordinate to functional efficiency. We call this causal order “inertia.” Objects follow it, and the human gaze, too, cannot escape its familiar trajectory.

The two-person exhibition Inertial Drift by Hyeon Jin Kwon and Naehoon Huh is a deliberate attempt to fracture this solid world of inertia. The two artists focus on the moment when an object ceases to function as a tool, or the state in which a function continues but its destination has vanished. It is precisely at the site of displacement—where inertia slips from its orbit—that the materiality concealed behind the name “tool,” and the aesthetic possibilities it holds, finally come to light.

Hyeon Jin Kwon explores the contradictory relationship between digital media and physical action. Untitled is a video work that repeatedly enacts the gesture of cutting water with scissors. The scissors move and the act of cutting persists, yet the water is never cut. The action exists, but unable to reach its purpose, it drifts somewhere in between. Monitor Work 2024-2 dismantles and reassembles the interior of a monitor, transforming it into an autonomous object and canvas. When the screen—once a conduit for information—is physically altered to expose its material reality, the viewer is confronted with the tension between virtual image and physical foundation.

Naehoon Huh delicately deflects familiar objects from their functional trajectories, transforming them into unfamiliar landscapes. Neither Full nor Empty is an installation where translucent vinyl is fixed to aluminum rods; as a motor turns, air fills the vinyl, which slowly swells into form. It appears full, yet a sense of emptiness coexists—the work dwells in that state of being filled yet incomplete. The photographic series Orbit distorts eco-corridors seen in satellite imagery. These structures, where the will for restoration and human logic coexist, lose their original destination through transformation, remaining as a strange trajectory spiraling in place. In Naehoon Huh’s work, the subject becomes an autonomous event only at the moment of its departure.

The approaches of the two artists differ. While Hyeon Jin Kwon deconstructs and reconstitutes the mechanisms of media, Naehoon Huh subtly shifts the context and functions surrounding the subject. Yet both bodies of work converge at the same point: what can only be seen after an object has ceased to be a tool. Inertial Drift offers a moment to step away from a daily life centered on efficiency and purpose, encountering the strange and singular presence that the objects around us have quietly harbored all along.