From Its Own Ashes

𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘐𝘵𝘴 𝘖𝘸𝘯 𝘈𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘴 is a duo exhibition by Sangwoo Yoo and Isaac Couch that originates from both artists’ personal navigation of loss. Yoo recalls encountering a felled Christmas tree in downtown Chicago as a pivotal moment of unexpected sorrow, its fallen form symbolizing both the tree’s life giving force and the grief he holds for friends and family lost; Couch embodies a similar mourning for loved ones lost, drawing upon his upbringing within the American Southern and the constraints of western garment design as a metaphor for the destructive forces of systemic oppression. Although influenced by grief, both artists embrace the potentiality of instability. Working across sculpture, scent, video installation, and garments, Yoo and Couch investigate how these processes of loss (both material and spiritual) can become an alchemic, generative site of transformation.

*Please find the exhibition text at the bottom of the page.

Text by Francine Almeda (@frannieflo)

Check a review of the show by Frank Geiser here: Newcity Art: Isaac Couch and Sangwoo Yoo Call Attention to Familiar Specters

Exhibition Text:

“Last night, when I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The houses, the trees, the people: Burning. Smoke awoke me” says Lauren Olamina, the fictional protagonist in Octavia Butler’s seminal text, Parable of the Sower. Set in a not-too distant post-apocalyptic reality, Olamina awakens to the loss of her community. Staring at the remains of her old life, Olamina gathers herself and flees towards an unknown future. This moment famously becomes the crucible that propels Olamina to the creation of Earthseed, a belief system whose philosophical center holds that change is the foundational force towards liberation. Published in the 1990’s Parable of the Sower has been lauded for its prophetic resonance with our present. Butler’s reflections on economic disparity, environmental devastation, and systemic discrimination are continuous throughlines in our contemporary times. In writing Parable of the Sower, Butler changed the trajectory of a generation by extending insurmountable challenges into a realm of poeticism - utilizing metaphor as a mirror, inviting the reader to contend with the capacities of chaos to be a condition for change. 

With similar mechanisms and social inquiries at its core, From Its Own Ashes is a duo exhibition by Sangwoo Yoo and Isaac Couch that originates from both artists' personal navigation of loss. Yoo recalls encountering a felled Christmas tree in downtown Chicago as a pivotal moment of unexpected sorrow, its fallen form symbolising both the tree’s life giving force and the grief he holds for friends and family lost; Couch embodies a similar mourning for loved ones lost, drawing upon his upbringing within the American Southern and the constraints of western garment design as a metaphor for the destructive forces of systemic oppression. Although influenced by grief, both artists embrace the potentiality of instability. Working across sculpture, scent, video installation, and garments, Yoo and Couch investigate how these processes of loss (both material and spiritual) can become an alchemic, generative site of transformation.

Anchoring the exhibition isa collaborative installation by Yoo and Couch. Couch’s ephemeral sculpture, suspended from the ceiling, consists of a “winding cloth” garment entombed in plaster, its final form suggesting both the figure and its void. His designs are simultaneously functional and narratively conceptual, referencing historically restrictive western fashion only to alter their constraints into garments for an alternative, imagined future. Surrounding Couch’s sculpture, Yoo’s incense vessels are carefully arranged - these vessels are hand built from a solid tree resin, made from the gathered pine needles from the fallen christmas tree. In using tree sap, Yoo alludes to its medicinal history as a remarkable healing material. At the core of his practice is an exploration of healing through cycles of decay and growth, transmuting a single source material (gathered pine needles) into resin, oil, and dust, which manifest as vessels, incense, and sculptures, and thus creating life anew. 

From Its Own Ashes is both a haunting and a ceremony - an acknowledgement of a departure and celebration of something to come, implying that beginnings and endings are not fixed points but part of a continuous gesture. Throughout the exhibition, Couch’s figures emerge like specters, never fully there: a torso draped in chainmail stands silent addressing the viewer, or an arm extending incense as if providing an offering. Yoo’s works are in an equal state of disappearance - incense that becomes smoke, paper boats that float away towards a distant horizon. Through these moments of arrested alchemy, they do not present resolution, but rather revel in this state of transition. Couch and Yoo’s works become akin to votives, creating a place for the viewer to quietly meditate on their own relationship to disappearance and loss,  perhaps offering a hushed conviction that destruction can lead to a new dawn.

Text by Francine Almeda (@frannieflo)