Stuffed Animals and Found Objects Reconfigure in Sungho Bae’s Uncanny Sculptures
Seoul-born, Chicago-based sculptor Sungho Bae transforms discarded stuffed animals and salvaged materials into unsettling figurative works that interrogate emotional attachment and ritual meaning. His exhibition Apotropaia at 4th Ward Project Space presents sculptures fashioned from waste-sourced toys, taxidermy glass eyes, shamanic bells, decommissioned ritual objects, and clay that cohere into visceral, organ-like forms evoking tissue and muscle. Works such as Dansu—a severed head mounted on a weathered Go board with glass eyes and feather hair—and the amorphous wall pieces titled Gut negotiate tensions between the natural and artificial, life and death, through accumulated material traces. The practice draws conceptually on apotropaic traditions and magical thinking, examining how discarded childhood objects once imbued with protective power are reconfigured into uncanny assemblages that unsettle domesticity and sentiment through grotesque reconstruction.
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