Art & Exhibitions

A week after experiencing the artist Jihyun Jung’s latest piece, I am still sore.
At the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, Jung has installed a nearly 50-foot-tall rock-climbing wall and titled it Kaeru (2024), “frog” in Japanese. Red climbing holds zig-zag up the installation in two parallel paths, and a safety rope hangs from an auto belay up above. From noon to 5 p.m., Friday through Sunday, visitors can strap on a helmet, harness, and climbing shoes and attempt to scale it.
During an opening reception last week, I gave it a try and found it to be… very difficult. Moving slowly, painfully slowly, I made it maybe 30 percent of the way up before slipping. Viewers down below nevertheless applauded, which helped my wounded pride. “At the opening, only one person from the general audience made it to the top,” Jung told me later, making me feel a little better.
Kaeru is part of a superb and surprising show called “Dream Screen” that artist Rirkrit Tiravanija has curated as part of the Leeum’s biannual “Art Spectrum” series, which is devoted to young artists.
Preparing to grapple with the artwork. Photo by Sun A Moon.
Jung was born in 1986 and started climbing a few years ago. “I’ve always been fascinated by artificial climbing walls inspired by nature,” he said. “This particular piece is motivated by speed climbing, the sport that started in nature but evolved into something quite different.” The height of his creation is set to the international standard, and the current record in the event is, astonishingly, just under five seconds.
The brave climbers who make it to the top of Jung’s creation are able to see, close up, two metal sculptures of frogs like those at the Okitama Shrine in Ise, Japan, where they are regarded as symbols of good fortune. The pair are “wishing for double the speed and double the luck,” Jung said.
Rock climbing in art is unusual, but it is not without its precedents. Matthew Barney was known to scale gallery walls (nude) with climbing equipment early in his career, and Andra Ursuta offered up some not-safe-for-work climbing walls at the New Museum in 2016, while Baseera Khan made climbing holds out of casts of her body parts for a 2017 display at Participant Inc. in New York.
Right before I fell. Photo by Sun A Moon
Jung has taken an almost-straightforward but slightly sly approach to the climbing-art genre, which is very much in keeping with his practice. His sculptures tend to look familiar at first, but they get stranger the longer you look at them. In a recent solo outing at the Art Sonje Center in Seoul, he presented a disassembled billboard and objects that he 3D-printed from iPhone scans of automobile scraps. Here at Leeum, he’s using store-bought climbing equipment, but he’s doubled everything and added those frogs. A certain eerie, uncanny feeling lingers.
It’s an artwork about tough journeys and split-second decisions, and it’s an artwork that offers challenges: Are you willing to climb in front of an audience? Can you make it to the top? The vast majority of people will not be able to, and so it also poses fun, fruitful questions about how to make sense of—and how to evaluate—an artwork that you cannot fully experience.
But even for those who decide not to put on a harness and make an attempt at the summit, there is a lot of pleasure to be had. “Climbing is both a sport and an art form, combining sculptural beauty and performative elements,” Jung told me. “It’s fascinating to watch people solve the route in their own way as they climb. I love the atmosphere—the cheers and applause from the audience, the dynamic poses of people falling, and the sense of accomplishment when someone finally reaches the top.” More

Since 1995, the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto has surveyed society through shoes, from the legacy of men in high heels to footwear’s role in forensics. Next month, the institution is highlighting the growing relationship between art and sneakers—with a focus on recent artist collaborations that bridge star-studded drops with deeper cuts.
MSCHF BWD (2023). Photo by Kailee Mandel.
Coming up at the Bata Shoe Museum is “Art/Wear: Sneakers x Artists,” offering a deep dive into the growing trend, through the lens of 48 legendary artist-driven sneaker designs hailing from the museum’s own collection and new acquisitions alongside outside loans, some from the artists who made them.
Bryant Giles x New Balance 2002R (2022) Photo by Kailee Mandel.
“Art/Wear” will play out across the museum’s third floor, in thematic, chronological sections, mapping “the history of how sneakers came to be a focus for artists,” as the museum’s executive director and curator Elizabeth Semmelhack told me over email.
Peter Max x Randy’s Shoes (1968) Photo by Kailee Mandel.
“It starts with a look at the mass production of both canvas sneakers and ballpoint pens and markers to discuss the origins of drawing on sneakers with teen girls in the 1950s and 1960s,” Semmelhack, who’s penned numerous sneaker books, continued. The first known artist sneaker collab, which dates to the 1960s, will appear here: a pair of high top tennis shoes by acclaimed psychedelic artist Peter Max, for Randy’s shoes.
Cey Adams x adidas Adicolor Hi BI2 (2006). Photo by Kailee Mandel.
Next, “Art/Wear” will explore how graffiti writers like Stash, Futura, and Cey Adams further pioneered the link between art and kicks. Five pairs of KAWS sneakers will anchor this section, in addition to two complete KAWS x Sacai outfits, as Semmelhack noted, “to explore the complete embodiment of art.”
KAWS x DC shoes (2001). Photo by Brad Bridgers.
The show final section will devote itself to sneakers by fine artists like Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and Daniel Arsham. Packaging features most heavily here, demonstrating how “how sneakers and also their boxes and tissue paper give consumers access to artists’ work,” Semmelhack said. She likens the very limited editions of these shoes to fine art prints. A skate deck triptych by Murakami will enliven this space, too.
Takashi Murakami x BLACKPINK Ohana Full-Bloom Slides (2024). Photo by Kailee Mandel.
Sometimes, sneakers can feel like a very male dominated space. “Art/Wear” expands beyond this stereotype, including sneakers from about half a dozen female artists, including Shantell Martin, Vicky Vuong, and Kate Knudsen, the widow of Doobie Brothers drummer Keith Knudsen.
Ruohan Wang x Nike Air Force 1 Flyleather (2020). Photo by Kailee Mandel.
This show doesn’t shirk drama, either. After careful deliberation, Semmelhack included a pair of Tom Sachs’s Nikes in “Art/Wear,” even though the Olympian outfitter dropped Sachs amidst controversy last spring. Semmelhack said she opted to keep Sachs’s work “because it has been central to the history of artists and brand collaborations.”
Javier Calleja x Vault by Vans “You Have No Choice” slip ons (2022) Photo by Kailee Mandel.
Global commerce has enabled the artist patronage system to open up, as artists translate their work onto an ever widening array of products, and reach new audiences around the world. Compared with scarves, jewelry, or clothes, what makes sneakers so alluring?
Damien Hirst x Vans and Palms Casino Resort polka dot slip on (2019). Photo by Adrienne Naval.
First of all, sneakers offer a stronger structure, which allows an artist’s designs to shine without the fatigue of holding the body any one way. Furthermore, the packaging and related ephemera surrounding sneaker drops generate a particular kind of excitement.
Daniel Arsham x adidas Originals FUTURECRAFT 4D (2018). Photo by Adrienne Naval.
“I think it is important to note that sneakers are not blank canvases,” Semmelhack added. “The storied histories embedded in classic silhouettes, the cultural significance of specific brands, and the longstanding importance of sneakers in the creation of cultural and personal identity are all at play in artist collabs.”
As the exhibition will show, these sneakers prove that art has power beyond the gallery.
Mache ‘Blank Canvas’ Runner Customs (date unknown) Photo by Kailee Mandel.
“Art/Wear: Sneakers x Art” will be on view at Bata Show Museum, 327 Bloor St W, Toronto, October 3, 2024–March 26, 2025. More

Shantell Martin’s style is so appealing that she’s had to battle wine and fashion companies alike for pilfering it. It has also placed her in international demand and created a hectic schedule: this month alone, the London-born artist is celebrating new murals at Rockefeller Center with the Art Production Fund and a limited edition mini-bike with Brompton.
But she will aim to slow things down a bit on October 1, when she unveils her first-ever walking path, a 160-foot-long labyrinth that will create space for meditation amid the madness of Times Square.
“I attended several 10-day silent meditation retreats,” Martin told me via email, recalling when she took up the practice while living in Japan in the 2000s. “I haven’t participated in one of those over the past few years, partly because I’ve found that walking and drawing provide a similar sense of mindfulness and space.”
The artist previously worked with the presenter of the new project, Times Square Arts, in 2020, as part of the nonprofit’s “Midnight Moment” digital art program. Her forthcoming maze, The Path: A Meditation of Lines, will lead viewers on a winding journey through the notoriously frenetic Manhattan hub. Martin’s design, which she’s conceptualized in her stream-of-consciousness style, bears trademarks of the artist’s look, like looping lines, smiling faces, and neat text. More and more visual elements become clear the longer one looks, including mountains, sailboats, and stick figures.
Of course, it will be hard to divine the larger composition uniting these intertwining, disparate elements in person. That will be part of the fun for those who traverse The Path. Martin’s maze will center on two crisscrossing primary routes, one white, one black. Dotted lines diverge from both, like little roads to nowhere. Playful characters and accents offer unexpected shortcuts along the way, surrounded by words that reappear throughout Martin’s practice, like “breathe,” “someday,” and “are you you,” all formulating different phrases depending on the approach one takes. The work’s only fixed, complete sentence will appear in its upper right-hand corner, for viewers to make out on their way from 47th Street to 48th Street along Broadway: “You are in the right place at the right time.”
A preview of the walking path. Courtesy of Shantell Martin.
The maze will be sanctioned off from the rest of Times Square only during activations, such as daily guided meditations and musical performances. Otherwise, participants will have to navigate the winding paths and the crowds all at once. Fortunately, the work is intentionally painted “on a relatively quiet plaza rather than in the center of all the Times Square action,” Times Square Arts director Jean Cooney said in an email. Furthermore, Martin herself has recorded an audio guide, and seating will allow for sustained pauses.
“Walking, much like drawing, can empower you and move you forward—both metaphorically and physically,” Martin remarks in the project’s description. “Putting one foot in front of the other is a simple yet powerful act, and I hope that this message and activity can be translated through this project.”
The local Times Square community—including theater staff and sanitation workers—will benefit from their own dedicated walking sessions. Otherwise, The Path will remain accessible to the public all day, every day, through November 20. More

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