Sijae Jang (b. 1993) focuses on precarious scenes from everyday life—such as faded objects, cracks in broken building facades, and demolition sites—translating the tense gazes and emotions they evoke into the language of sculpture.
 
By twisting, accumulating, and burning commonly used industrial materials, he creates three-dimensional and installation works with irregular, rough textures. Through the unfamiliar and unsettling points that emerge from these processes, the artist seeks to uncover new possibilities.

Sijae Jang’s work begins with observing fragments of the urban environment. What captures his attention are scenes of objects and buildings whose material properties have been distorted over time. Working in Euljiro, an area lined with old ironworks, he naturally developed an interest in such surroundings.
 
Seeking to recreate the precarious sensations he encounters throughout the city, Jang twists and dismantles the familiar orders and forms of everyday life—those so ordinary as to be taken for granted—and incorporates the chance textures that arise in this process into his work.

He primarily uses everyday disposables such as waste, industrial materials, and construction supplies, attempting to embody the irregular and rough textures that arise when familiarity is dismantled—rendering them both visually and tactilely perceptible.
 
Jang’s practice of defamiliarizing the familiar often takes shape by deconstructing the textures and forms of objects into Informel sculptures, or by placing ordinary items within specific spaces, transforming them into entities of indeterminate identity.

For instance, Jang has woven together everyday disposables—such as tape or black garbage bags—or waste materials collected from redevelopment demolition sites, transforming them into large-scale sculptural works that he temporarily installs in urban alleyways or against buildings.
 
Grounded in the tension and distinctive textures of specific sites, his works at first seem to blend seamlessly with their surroundings, yet simultaneously evoke a peculiar sense of estrangement.

Such site-specific works by Jang reinterpret the precarious sensations triggered by particular places into sculptural form, stripping away the familiarity of everyday sites and imbuing them with a sense of strangeness—inviting viewers to perceive and experience these spaces anew.

These projects have taken place not only in Korea but also in Paris, France; Eindhoven, the Netherlands; and Berlin, Germany. In each city, Jang collected discarded materials or utilized those specific to the local context to create his works. He then placed the resulting pieces throughout urban spaces, documenting them through performance, photography, and video.
 
Through this series of actions—situating unfamiliar forms within unfamiliar cities—Jang has experimented with how his works might collide with and integrate into their surroundings.

In other words, Jang’s practice unfolds in close relationship with specific sites. Whether working in an exhibition venue or an everyday environment, he conceives his sculptures in response to the given space, seeking out materials and textures that resonate with its inherent sensibilities.

At such moments, Jang’s works are not solely completed by the artist himself; rather, their forms emerge through the contingencies inherent in the materials or through the process of performance. His first solo exhibition, 《Client, Interlocutor》 (TINC, 2023), likewise emphasized this approach: instead of presenting finished works as outcomes, it staged installations produced through two rounds of performance, accompanied by archival records, as a sequence of unfolding events.
 
The exhibition was conceived as a project grounded in object relations theory from psychoanalysis. Jang translated the therapeutic process—where a client with a personal history voluntarily seeks out an interlocutor—into an artistic medium, transforming the exhibition into a site where the audience could observe from multiple perspectives and roles.

Jang’s work presented in the group exhibition 《Phantom Sense》 (Platform-L, 2023) likewise continued to shift gradually throughout the course of the show, allowing viewers to witness the unfolding process in real time. Inspired by the imaging principles of MRI blood-flow tracking, his ‘Untitled’ (2023) series translates into sculptural form a mechanical sensibility that instantaneously captures movements at the scale of tens of nanometers while anticipating their potential future transformations.
 
The work, with its white tentacle-like extensions reminiscent of elongated blood vessels, underwent continuous transformation during the exhibition, evoking the presence of a living organism. This massive, creature-like figure conjured not only a sense of the grotesque but also moments of the sublime.

Recently, Jang has been focusing on kinetic works that incorporate movement and sound rather than being tied to specific places or spaces. His kinetic practice is not guided by precise calculation but unfolds as an experiment with structures that elicit motion in a primal, instinctive way.
 
He pays close attention to the unpredictable dynamics that emerge, along with the organic movements and tensions they generate. Within these irregular motions, unintended sounds—such as friction, vibration, and trembling—become an integral part of the work, extending the artwork beyond form to include these chance auditory elements.

In 2024, Jang shared his kinetic practice and personal memories with the audience through an open studio, 《Orbit Deviation of HX9X+33》, held in a building he used as his studio in Euljiro.
 
The kinetic sculpture Scarecrow (2024), placed on the studio floor, moved around, striking the metal plates laid beneath it. The project originated from a story Jang had heard—that an uninhabited house eventually collapses—and his imagination: “If I were to create a moving artwork that could stand in for my presence, might it at least delay the studio’s decay?” This speculative idea became the conceptual seed for the work.

Jang imagined sculptures moving autonomously through space in his stead, conceiving not only their motion but also the sounds they would generate. The noises produced by these moving forms—grinding or cutting metal, the rising and falling of shutters—evoke the ambient sounds of the studio as well as the noises he makes while working.
 
Moreover, the chance sounds produced in tandem with these irregular movements create an organic rhythm, giving the work the impression of a living, breathing entity.

Furthermore, in his recent solo exhibition 《Xenogenesis》 (Faction, 2024), Jang presented science-fiction-inspired sculptural works that explore the boundaries between humans and life, technology and nature. By joining and transforming functional industrial materials, his sculptural “bodies” in this exhibition appear as organic forms created through the hybridization of inanimate industrial components—manifesting the concept of xenogenesis.

Jang observes that, with the rapid advancement of technology today, the boundary between life and death is becoming increasingly blurred. In response, he began to imagine cyclical processes that transcend binary oppositions and to envision possible forms of future life.
 
Based on these imaginings, his hybridized “bodies” react to unstable gravitational forces within a space, moving, producing sound, and pulsating with vitality. The grotesque and uncanny sensations these scenes evoke invite viewers to imagine nonhuman entities beyond conventional binary boundaries.

Jang’s sculptural practice not only makes us acutely aware of the subtle tremors and tensions embedded in everyday life, but also invites us to imagine alternative worlds beyond reality. The unstable points in his work and the delicate, unsettling sensations they generate prompt viewers to reconsider what they have long taken for granted.

 "I am deeply struck when ordinary objects, placed in specific spaces, transform into entities of indeterminate identity, or when predictable orders collapse, producing feelings of unease or awe. I continue to seek out these peculiar, uncanny, and somewhat uncomfortable nuances."     (Jang Sijae, excerpted from an interview at Palbok Art Factory Creative Studio)

After majoring in industrial design, Sijae Jang has focused on sculpture and three-dimensional works. His solo exhibitions include 《Xenogenesis》 (Faction, Seoul, 2024), 《Orbit Deviation of HX9X+33》 (Yoho Seoul and surrounding sites, Seoul, 2024), and 《Client, Interlocutor》 (TINC, Seoul, 2023).
 
He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《The Disappeared Story》 (Sian Museum, Yeongcheon, 2025), 《FOR LIGQIDITY》 (Mupurpose, Seoul, 2024), 《Dummy》 (17717, Seoul, 2023), 《Phantom Sense》 (Platform-L, Seoul, 2023), 《Meeting the Wall》 (Prompt Project, Seoul, 2023), and 《THINGS LEFT UNMADE》 (Chamber, Seoul, 2023).
 
Jang has participated in artist-in-residence programs such as the Euljiro Design Art Project 1 (2019–2024) and the 8th Palbok Art Factory Creative Studio (2025–2026).

References

• 장시재, Sijae Jang (Artist Website)
• 팔복예술공장, [팔복예술공장 창작스튜디오 8기] “장시재 작가” 인터뷰
• 비애티튜드, 날씨도, 계절도 열심히 느끼면서
• 아트바바, [서문] TINC – 내담자, 대담자 (Artbava, [Preface] TINC - Client, Interlocutor)
• 플랫폼엘, [전시소개] 팬텀센스 (Platform-L, [Exhibition Overview] Phantom Sense)
• 파도그래프, [서문] 팩션 – Xenogenesis (Padograph, [Preface] Faction – Xenogenesis)