Touchy feely

I first encountered Seung Yul Oh’s work at Te Papa six years ago. Four Oddooki 2008 pieces were installed in the sculp­ture court on the rooftop. Seung describes these large egg birds as per­form­ance sculp­tures — they rock back­wards and for­wards when pushed, like some toy from child­hood writ large. Their wit and joy­ful­ness are con­ta­gious. And you can touch them.

Touch­ing and inter­act­ing are a big part of Seung’s work. MOAMOA, A Dec­ade is cur­rently on in the down­stairs gal­ler­ies at City Gal­lery Wel­ling­ton. It brings togeth­er sev­er­al works from the last dec­ade. And there’s lots to touch — although signs every­where remind you that only ‘good touch­ing’ is allowed…

When you type Seung Yul Oh’s name into Google, Seuss­ville, the offi­cial site of Dr Seuss, comes up. This feels like a good match. The sense of play, the sheer ridicu­lous­ness of a whole room full of giant yel­low blow-up cap­sules could be straight out of a Dr Seuss interi­or — maybe the place where Sam-I-Am eats his green eggs and ham. The giant bubble fall­ing out of the ceil­ing, Hug­gong 2013, in the gal­lery foy­er, and the room-sized inflat­able bean bag, Sphere Square 2013, sit some­where in the same camp. Such fun.

The same is true of The Abil­ity to Blow Them­selves Up 2004–14, an ongo­ing video work in which a series of bal­loon-blowers are blow­ing up bal­loons that burst in their faces. The video goes “Bang, bang, bang, bang…” as the bal­loons pop, and the looks of shock and sur­prise, and the jumps and screams, jolt and bump the view­er along.

The work hints at some­thing else — the uni­ver­sal­ity of shock. Every­one has pretty much the same reac­tion. Seung has isol­ated this moment of sur­prise into a series of visu­al pops. It’s an image for dis­asters, large and small. Even if you know it’s com­ing, there’s still the surprise.

My favour­ite gal­lery is the room full of noodle towers — res­in sculp­tures that rep­lic­ate the moment when you pause to cool the water­fall of hot noodles that cas­cades from your chop­sticks before you suck them into your mouth. All the best-known noodle dishes of Asia are rep­res­en­ted — Ramen, Udon, Jab­chae, BiB­im Naeng Myun, to name a few.

This room has eight of these per­son-sized noodle towers. But when you enter it you’re greeted by what looks like a series of fig­ures — long-necked birds with chop­sticks for beaks and table legs, flank­ing a tower of stain­less-steel bowls and trays. They’re ser­i­ous and hil­ari­ous — Dr Seuss would have approved. MOAMOA, A Dec­ade is on at City Gal­lery until 24 August.

August Art

Séraph­ine Pick’s exhib­i­tion at Pataka Art + Museum, Look­ing like someone else (until 20 Septem­ber), brings togeth­er a series of por­traits that span her 20-year career. There are por­traits of friends and self-por­traits. Most inter­est­ingly, they show the devel­op­ment of her approach to paint­ing — from tightly worked to opaque. The exhib­i­tion is dis­ap­point­ingly cramped into a small gal­lery but presents a less known aspect of Pick’s practice.[/info]