Artists

Shinoh Nam

Press release

For Gallery Weekend Berlin 2026, Mountains is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Shinoh Nam (*1993, Seoul). Shinoh Nam's artistic practice unfolds at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and design, engaging questions of psychoanalysis and cultural displacement. Having grown up in Korea, a society defined by development and competition, and later studying and living in Germany where preservation and coexistence are deeply embedded values, Nam constructs a body of work that reflects on the contradictions of progress and identity formation. His sculptures, installations, and two-dimensional works oscillate between construction and collapse, between the functional and the personal.

The exhibition at Mountains presents Nam's ongoing exploration of moral and spatial ambiguity: a world where nationalism seems to hide beneath the rhetoric of coexistence, and where the individual negotiates between self-interest and moral principle. Through hand-worked steel, burnt wood, glass, and industrial foam, Nam creates architectural fragments that appear both precise and precarious—embodying a state of permanent reconstruction. The artist's practice challenges architecture's utopian promises and the social ideologies embedded within material form.

Each sculpture is both fragment and proposition—a ruin of progress and a model of possibility. "Nam puts forth a philosophy of reconstruction which simultaneously romanticises and critiques the habit of constantly throwing up buildings." ... "His artisanal treatment of industrial materials invokes a sense of impermanence at odds with the capitalistic desire for eternity." Olamiju Fajemisin Extending the spatial concerns of his previous exhibitions, Nam conceives the presentation at Mountains as a fragmented "house," in which only the floor plan is delineated. The artist, in collaboration with architect Changki Kim, drew inspiration from the film Dogville and applied the structural concept of a house to the exhibition through the use of architectural drawings. Within this open structure, viewers move through loosely defined interior zones that stage encounters between objects, gestures, and psychological states. The exhibition shifts focus from architectural exteriors to interior space, using furniture and domestic elements to examine relationships between humans, objects, and the systems that organize them. References to Victorian, modernist, and postmodern design intersect, unsettling linear narratives of progress and revealing how ideas of “good design” become institutionalized and absorbed into systems of value and consumption. Rather than proposing fixed positions, Nam foregrounds subtle and ambiguous modes of action—gestures that exist between critique and complicity. Acts of observation, indirection, and withdrawal emerge as ways of navigating a condition in which clear stances risk becoming performative. Throughout the exhibition, sculptural elements such as desks, doors, and site-specific interventions construct situations of partial visibility, positioning the viewer simultaneously as observer and observed. Sustaining a field of unresolved contradictions, the exhibition resists closure and instead invites viewers to reflect on their own position within overlapping systems of meaning, structure, and desire.

Shinoh Nam, born 1993 in Seoul, South Korea, lives and works in Berlin and Seoul. He received a Meisterschüler from Monica Bonvicini at the Universität der Künste in Berlin (2022) and previously studied Fine Art and Architecture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Rita McBride, Lothar Hempel, Jürgen Drescher and Donatella Fioretti (2015-2021). Before moving to Germany, Nam has worked in Photography and Visual Media in Seoul, where he also obtained a qualification in psychological counseling. Nam's upcoming and recent exhibitions include N/A gallery, Seoul (2027); Caption Seoul, Seoul (2027); The Drawing Center, New York (2026); Ranee Seoul art space, Seoul (2026); The Third gallery, Seoul (2026); Mountains, Berlin (2026); Hyperborea (cur. Shelly Lea Reich), as part of HALLEN 06 at Wilhelmhallen Berlin during Berlin Art Week (2025); Clearing NY/LA in Basel during ART BASEL week (2025); NADAN, Berlin (2025); Wehrmuehle Biesenthal (2023); Anhaltischer Kunstverein / Kunsthalle Dessau (2022); Darmstädter Sezession, Darmstadt (2022); KARMA International, Zurich (2021); SOMA art space, Berlin (2021); Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin (2021). Nam has been nominated for various prizes, including the Kunststiftung Kunze scholarship (2025); Ars Viva Preis (shortlist 2024, nominated 2025); Elsa Neumann Prize (shortlist 2023); UDK Berlin Art Award (winner, 2023); Darmstadt Prize for young artists (shortlist, 2022); Karl Hofer Stipendien (shortlist, 2022); and Federal Prize For Art Students (2022). Works by Shinoh Nam are held in the Burger Collection, Hong Kong, and other collections in Europe and Asia.