Seongeun Lee Builds a House That Splits Into Two

Cheongju Art Studio Presents Two Houses in Cheongju

Cheongju Art Studio presents Two Houses by Seongeun Lee in Cheongju, through October 28, 2026.

The show rests on two works that borrow from stage machinery. One Road: Periaktoi is a row of rotating triangular columns painted with roads and landscapes, and Two Houses: Ekkyklema is a house on casters that separates into two halves.

A papier-mâché pigeon on a pile of waste wood pallets sits in the same room. Below, Lee explains why the houses and roads keep moving.

Exhibition Text by Seongeun Lee

Two Houses is an installation project that examines images of home and family as models of a happy, stable life, in relation to the roles and life paths expected of women.

Drawing on Barbie’s Dreamhouse, Sylvanian Families, and 1960s American suburban houses, the project also incorporates childhood memories of toys that were desired but not allowed. The impulse to leave home and an ambivalence toward family life find expression in familiar domestic forms and the incongruous landscapes within them.

One Road: Periaktoi draws on rotating triangular scenic devices whose faces present different backgrounds. Roads and landscapes distributed across these surfaces connect or break apart as the structures turn and their arrangement changes. A seemingly continuous road disperses across separate views, while another landscape comes into sight, prompting viewers to shift their position to follow the changes.

Two Houses: Ekkyklema takes its cue from a theatrical device used to bring interior scenes into view. Mountains, hills, roads, and skies appear inside the house, while figures, miniature houses, and cars sit among fragmented walls and floors.

What appears from the front to be a single house separates into two as the structures move and rotate, revealing both the landscapes inside and their supporting framework. The scene also changes as viewers move between the front and back of the house.

Both works extend the recurring movement without arrival explored in earlier works to the structures that form the houses and roads themselves. Arrangements altered through audience participation are returned to their initial positions every three hours, repeating the cycle of movement and rearrangement.