The Standing ManL’Homme debout  ·  서 있는 사람

For more than two decades CHUNG Hyun has carved standing human figures from decommissioned railroad ties — timbers that spent their working lives pressed beneath the weight of passing trains. Cut with a chainsaw and an axe, and left with their scars, bolt holes and creosote-blackened grain intact, the ties rise again as silent, headless sentinels: figures of memory, endurance and resistance.

The series is the artist’s signature body of work. In 2016, forty-eight figures stood among the clipped lime trees of the Jardin du Palais-Royal in Paris; since 2019, forty-four figures have stood in the open-air Sky Square of the Seosomun Shrine History Museum in Seoul, where they remain on view.