Ian Kiaer

Pieces of Styrofoam, garbage bags, and discarded plastic boxes are part of Ian Kiaer’s latest installations, which are inspired by the impact of urban growth on the Ulchiro market district in Seoul. On closer inspection, what looks like a random collection of waste scattered around the two gallery spaces slowly materializes into captivating urban landscapes that draw on visitors’ imaginations to complete the transformation. In the gallery’s main room, which houses the installation Ulchiro Project (all works 2007), one feels like a giant looming over a futuristic urban jungle. A construction made from inflated Korean garbage bags hovers like a modernist apartment block near two small, improvised architectural models on the floor, while a skeletal aluminum frame, labeled wrapping paper, and two monochrome canvases hung on the walls evoke images of neon signs and billboards. Similarly, in the second gallery, the installation Ulchiro project: pond, whose title refers to the city’s transformation of an underground sewage system into a clean river, manages to re-create the drastic intervention with the help of only a few carefully arranged props—paper bags, plastic containers, blocks of Styrofoam, and a small painting of a pond. Kiaer’s engrossing assemblages create subtle but poignant narratives, which can be seen as utopian or dystopian. While his fragile architectural constructions suggest Archigram’s 1960s-era futurist playfulness, the disposable materials he employs simultaneously serve as a quiet but potent reminder of the environmental changes that are the true cost of such urban living.