On March 6, I attended the vernissage of the solo exhibition The Legs of a Whale by Korean artist Lim Jeong Soo at Jelení Gallery in Prague.
Between Cultures, Between Forms
Lim Jeong Soo was born in Seoul but has lived and worked in Prague for the last few years. She is a sculpture graduate of the Korea National University of Arts (2019) and also continued practicing by earning a master's degree at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague (UMPRUM).
Her vocabulary is situated in the cross-cultural intersection of a number of cultural codes, evading classification in a single tradition. Working across installation, performance, and multimedia, she interrogates the modalities of perception and how space forms identity.
Her works have been staged in Berlin, New York, Seoul and Prague, as well as in avant-garde spaces and residencies around the world—from Saint Petersburg and Lisbon to Japan and the Netherlands. She also participated in group exhibition in 2024 such as Art Alliance 2024 (Gallery Moth, Seoul), Small Items (OhOn, Seoul), Cultural Superhighway: Iteration (Salon de Kunst, Amsterdam), Small Hands, Short Hair, Big Feet (Gallery NIBIRU, Ostrava), Radio: Bushes (Gallery of modern art, Hradec Králové) and Today's Sky (Gallery NIKA, Prague) together with her solo presentation Finches at DOS Gallery (Seoul).
Selected by DOOSAN Art LAB, Lim Jeong Soo is ranked among Korea's top 10,000 new artists.
In 2025, her works already on display in Beyond Pavement (Komet K, Frankfurt) and Carnival Project 2 (Memory Factory1945, Suncheon).
Art as a Dialogue with Reality
Lim Jeong Soo is fascinated by the fragility of identity.In her works, the self is not an essence but a process that is dynamic and subject to desires, myths, and social norms. Her objects are in the process of constant transformation where boundaries break down and the viewer becomes part of the process.
This concept is extended to her performances, where she uses the body, sound and movement as instruments of discovery. Her participation in the Seoul International New Media Festival and Riga Performance Festival demonstrates her attempt to break free from conventional forms of art.
The Legs of a Whale
From 7 March to 30 March, 2025, the exhibition invites us to reflect on the nature of perception, reality and subjectivity. At what point does the line become blurred between a thing and its interpretation? How accurately do perceptions reflect reality? Such are questions at the very heart of Lim Jeong Soo's art.
The name of the show is a play on the absurdity of fixed ideas: can we even imagine a legged whale? How firm are the ideas we take for granted?
In the start, reality and fantasy merged. The Legs of a Whale became a shifting metaphor, constantly evolving. These legs reach out into the depths of the unknown, suspended beneath the surface of what is known. We are used to naming and defining, but what if some things simply are – without names, beyond our understanding?
Lim Jeong Soo has been exploring transformation, cross-over of bodies, identities and species for years. Her sculptures are living creatures – altering, reacting, merging into a body politic.
The gallery is converted into a whale's workshop, recombining forms, skins and shards – not as trophies but as possibilities. What does it take to become other than who you are? How do we transgress human categorizations and be?
Instead of giving answers, she invites us to question how we perceive the world and where illusion becomes reality. It is not simply an exhibition – it is a dialogue, challenging every visitor to redefine their place in the world or at least to ask herself what that place is.
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