Geonmin

Think & Process

"Can chaos and refined beauty coexist?"

It all began when I came across a tangled bundle of cables piled in a corner of my studio.
At the time, I could no longer find fascination in predictable and simple forms. Industrially machined, symmetrical structures with clean, precise lines were still elegant and familiar, but they felt akin to rewatching a movie whose ending I already knew—tedious and uninspiring. Instead, I wondered if it was possible to discover beauty within chaos. Just as we perceive beauty in the randomness of nature—in clouds, branches, or the flow of a river—could we also evoke a sense of beauty from human-made chaos?

To create forms born of chaos meant breaking free from the rigid order of geometric conventions. Looking at the tangled mess of cables, I felt an urge to untangle them immediately, to restore order. Yet, at the same time, I asked myself: could I transform this disarray into beauty without "fixing" it? This was a question that upended the principles that had defined my sculptural practice for the past decade. Inspired by the myth of the Gordian Knot, where a problem was resolved with a decisive cut, I sought to "cut through" this entanglement in a different way—preserving its chaos yet reshaping it into a statement of intent.

Gordian Knot was born from this inquiry. The work maintains the complexity and disorder of the tangled knot, yet elevates it into something beautiful. By slicing the top of the knot flat, I introduced a functional element—a surface to place objects—while preserving its chaotic essence. This was more than just a pursuit of beauty; it was an experiment that challenged the established principles of form—simplicity, symmetry, and predictability—on which traditional aesthetic values rest.

This work poses two fundamental questions:

'Is chaos truly the opposite of beauty? Can the two not coexist?'
'Are functionality and aesthetics inherently at odds with one another?'

Gordian Knot represents my answer to these questions, as well as an ongoing exploration of them through the language of sculpture.