Imagine eighteen straw-skinned figures, necks bare and heads conspicuously absent, united by a single circular platform they bear on their shoulders. Now picture a lone straw sphere perched atop that platform—its every tilt sparking a frantic scramble as each figure lunges for the prize, only to watch it slip tantalizingly out of reach. Welcome to Round Table, Seoul-based artist Choe U-Ram’s mesmerizing fusion of robotics and myth.
From its debut in 2022, Round Table has compelled audiences to confront the tension between cooperation and competition, abundance and want. At first glance, those headless straw bodies might appear as one harmonious collective—but the moment the “head” begins its slow roll, solidarity fractures. Each automated figure rises in hopeful pursuit, and as one stretches forward, the table’s engineered slope betrays them all, sending the ball skittering to the next outstretched limb. The result is a modern-day Sisyphus tale: endless striving toward an ever-receding reward.
Beneath this poetic struggle lies an extraordinary feat of kinetic engineering. Choe’s installation employs a ceiling-mounted camera that tracks the straw orb’s every move, feeding live data to a central computer. Hidden motors ebb and flow beneath the table’s surface, dynamically adjusting its angle so that the ball never quite escapes but never quite settles either. The illusion of imminent disaster—no guardrails, no failsafe—keeps viewers perched on the edge of their seats, even as Choe quietly ensures the performance never spirals into chaos.
“Scarcity breeds conflict, whether in nature or in our own psyches,” Choe has explained. Through Round Table, he invites us to witness how desire warps community, how the promise of possession can undermine collective harmony. Yet there’s beauty in the choreography: the shuffling feet of straw, the hesitant lean of a figure as it reaches, the ball’s measured arc as it glides northeast and then south.
For Choe U-Ram, the headless figures are more than automated puppets—they are avatars in a dance of human longing. And as the head rolls on, we, too, find ourselves complicit in the chase, asking: if we never catch our own “heads,” what drives us to keep trying?
A Glimpse into Choe U-Ram’s World
Born in Seoul in 1970 to a family of artists—and the grandson of one of Korea’s first automotive engineers—Choe U-Ram’s childhood was steeped in both creative curiosity and mechanical wonder. Fueled by a fascination with machines and inspired by science-fiction tales, he initially dreamed of building real robots to safeguard loved ones. Yet familial encouragement led him to Chung-Ang University’s art department, where a pivotal kinetic sculpture course in 1994 set him on his current path. He earned his B.F.A. in 1992 and M.F.A. in 1999, experimenting early on with motorized elements in sculptural form.
After a stint designing robots at a commercial firm, Choe unveiled his first “anima-machines” in the early 2000s—fantastical, animal-inspired kinetic sculptures that laid bare their gears, bolts, and drives as they moved. These works, often bearing Latin-style names and accompanied by allegorical narratives, probed the intersection of nature and technology, reflecting human desires projected onto mechanical lifeforms.
Over the past two decades, Choe has exhibited globally—from his inaugural solo show in 1998 to becoming the first Korean artist to mount a solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum in 2006—and has been honored with numerous awards, including the POSCO Steel Art Award Grand Prize (2006), Today’s Young Artist Award for Fine Arts (2006), and the Kim Se-Choong Sculpture Award (2009). In 2014, he was a Signature Art Prize finalist, and in 2022 he presented over forty new works in the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series at Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art—an exhibition titled Little Ark that grappled with humanity’s future using recycled materials and kinetic storytelling.
Today, Choe U-Ram continues to push the boundaries of kinetic and robotic art, reminding us that beneath every mechanism lies a mirror to our own hopes, struggles, and ceaseless quest for meaning.
Choe U-Ram : Website | Youtube
Via: Mymodernmet
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