Hijo Nam, Full Moon, 2019, ottchil (dry lacquer), hemp, glutinous rice, mother-of-pearl, clay powder, 65 × 63 × 65 cm. Courtesy the artist

Hijo Nam: Between Time and Being
Closing Sunday, September 27, 2026
37 Clinton St, NYC

There’s still time to view Between Time and Being, a solo exhibition by New York–based Korean artist Hijo Nam, at Space 776 before it closes September 27. Bringing together fabric assemblages, lacquer sculpture, painting, and mixed media, the exhibition considers how time, memory, and relationships participate in the formation of human existence.

For Nam, time is not simply linear but accumulative: fabric retains traces of cutting, layering, and handling; lacquer gains depth through repeated application; and wood preserves the marks of weathering and use. Rather than concealing these traces, Nam allows them to remain active, transforming material into a record of duration and lived experience.

This understanding of time is inseparable from Nam’s interest in relationship and connection. In richly textured fabric assemblages, including Moments of Journey 2503, Moments of Journey 2, and Moments of Journey 2501, she layers and joins fragments while allowing differences in color, texture, and scale to remain visible.

The exhibition extends these ideas across a diverse range of materials and forms. In Liberal Ashanti 3 and Liberal Ashanti 5, dark, vessel-like forms emerge through the slow process of dry lacquer, their layered surfaces bearing the history of repeated making, while Full Moon brings luminosity to a related form through lacquer and mother-of-pearl. In Cycle of Nature 1, a weathered wagon wheel surrounds a circular painted image, bringing together the history of an existing object with ideas of landscape, memory, and natural recurrence. Works such as Rhythm 1 and Cycle of Life 7 further expand Nam’s vocabulary through wood, metal, hanji, hemp, and linen.

Across these works, joining, layering, repetition, and circularity become both physical processes and ways of thinking. Natural cycles of growth, disappearance, and renewal intersect with the rhythms of individual experience, creating a space where memory persists, relationships take shape, and existence continually evolves.

This New York exhibition is presented in dialogue with Nam’s concurrent exhibition at SPACE776 Seoul. Both presentations share the title Between Time and Being and a common conceptual foundation, while bringing together different selections of work. Rather than reproducing a single exhibition across two cities, the project allows the same questions to take different material forms in each location. As the work moves between Seoul and New York, it encounters new spaces and audiences, accumulating another layer of the very conditions Nam explores: time, memory, and relationship.

To learn more, click here.