At the Threshold

At the Threshold is a two-person exhibition featuring Woo Changwon and Henrik Strömberg, artists based in Korea and Berlin respectively. The exhibition title, Threshold, refers to the point of transition from one world to another. Here, it signifies the boundary where the familiar begins to be perceived anew. Although the two artists approach their subjects in different ways, both invite viewers to encounter the familiar world through a renewed perspective. For them, photography is not merely a medium for documenting reality, but a method of exploring the world itself.

Woo Changwon contemplates everyday subjects over extended periods, translating the qualities he perceives into images. Rather than focusing on the objects themselves, he is interested in the process of coming to know them, capturing the moment suspended between seeing and thinking. Even when looking at the same subject, what one notices and how one receives it inevitably differs from person to person. His work suggests that an image is formed not solely by the object itself, but through the viewer's own perception and lived experience. As viewers follow the artist's prolonged act of observation, they are invited to reconsider the subject through their own way of seeing. Ultimately, Woo's photographs do not simply present objects; they encourage us to reflect on the very way we perceive the world around us.

Henrik Strömberg works with objects marked by the passage of time—trees, stones, plants, and other everyday materials. He removes them from their original contexts and places them into new relationships, allowing familiar objects to be perceived as entirely different presences. Sometimes he relocates them, sometimes reveals only fragments, and sometimes combines disparate elements into new sculptural forms. What matters is not what these objects originally were, but what they become within the frame before us. Rather than prescribing a singular meaning, Strömberg constructs open images filled with subtle clues, inviting viewers to generate new relationships and meanings through their own memories and experiences.

The threshold begins with the world itself—with the familiar objects that surround us each day. To cross it is to encounter those objects anew, allowing perception to shift. At the end of that journey, viewers find themselves confronting not only the work, but also their own memories, sensations, and inner landscape. Rather than offering a fixed interpretation, the exhibition opens a channel for contemplation, allowing each viewer's thoughts to flow according to their own experiences and sensibilities. Where that current ultimately arrives is not within the object itself, but within the viewer's own interior—a place that only they can truly enter. (text by. Jiwon Lee)

The Familiar, and a World Read Anew

Jiwon Lee

At the Threshold is a two-person exhibition featuring Woo Changwon and Henrik Strömberg, artists based in Korea and Berlin respectively. The exhibition title, Threshold, refers to the point of transition from one world to another. Here, it signifies the boundary where the familiar begins to be perceived anew. Although the two artists approach their subjects in different ways, both invite viewers to encounter the familiar world through a renewed perspective. For them, photography is not merely a medium for documenting reality, but a method of exploring the world itself.

Woo Changwon contemplates everyday subjects over extended periods, translating the qualities he perceives into images. Rather than focusing on the objects themselves, he is interested in the process of coming to know them, capturing the moment suspended between seeing and thinking. Even when looking at the same subject, what one notices and how one receives it inevitably differs from person to person. His work suggests that an image is formed not solely by the object itself, but through the viewer's own perception and lived experience. As viewers follow the artist's prolonged act of observation, they are invited to reconsider the subject through their own way of seeing. Ultimately, Woo's photographs do not simply present objects; they encourage us to reflect on the very way we perceive the world around us.

Henrik Strömberg works with objects marked by the passage of time—trees, stones, plants, and other everyday materials. He removes them from their original contexts and places them into new relationships, allowing familiar objects to be perceived as entirely different presences. Sometimes he relocates them, sometimes reveals only fragments, and sometimes combines disparate elements into new sculptural forms. What matters is not what these objects originally were, but what they become within the frame before us. Rather than prescribing a singular meaning, Strömberg constructs open images filled with subtle clues, inviting viewers to generate new relationships and meanings through their own memories and experiences.

Working within the shared medium of photography, the two artists investigate their subjects through fundamentally different approaches. Woo Changwon explores how perception is formed through sustained observation, while Henrik Strömberg investigates how meaning emerges through the displacement of context. Their photographs exist at the threshold between the familiar world and one newly perceived.

The threshold begins with the world itself—with the familiar objects that surround us each day. To cross it is to encounter those objects anew, allowing perception to shift. At the end of that journey, viewers find themselves confronting not only the work, but also their own memories, sensations, and inner landscape. Rather than offering a fixed interpretation, the exhibition opens a channel for contemplation, allowing each viewer's thoughts to flow according to their own experiences and sensibilities. Where that current ultimately arrives is not within the object itself, but within the viewer's own interior—a place that only they can truly enter.

Woo Changwon

Woo Changwon focuses on the moment when perception takes shape, in the space between seeing and thinking. He explores how the qualities inherent in matter are sensed and transformed into images within consciousness. His work reveals ways of observing and understanding the world, visualizing the moment when perception emerges.

CV

Born in Daegu, South Korea, 1971 

Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

Education

1992–1998 Photography, College of Art, Chung-Ang University

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2021 Sil(h)ence, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, Germany 

2020 INNER MONOLOGUE, KP Gallery, Seoul, South Korea 
2019 Like You, SPACE22 IKSEON, Seoul, South Korea 
2019 Respond to Physical Properties, Ligak Museum, Cheonan, South Korea

Selected Group Exhibitions

2025 Busan International Photo Festival 
2019 The International Exhibition of the Association of Modern Photography and Video, Gallery Toma, Daegu, South Korea 
2019 MorphO; Isolation of Portable Pressure, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, Germany

Grants & Collections

2021 Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung Grant
Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, Munich, Germany

Ligak Museum, Cheonan, South Korea

Henrik Stromberg

Henrik Stromberg constructs open-ended images through plants, objects, and sculptural forms. His practice explores metamorphosis, memory, and the materiality of time, generating new relationships and meanings through the deconstruction and reconstruction of images. Each image functions as a clue, inviting viewers to project their own experiences and sensations, and to discover landscapes of meaning unique to themselves.

CV

Born in Sweden, 1970
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Education

1994–1997 B.A. in Fine Art, Camberwell College of Art, London Institute, London, UK
1997–1999 M.A. in Fine Art Photography and History of Photography, FAMU, Academy of Performing Arts Prague, Czech Republic

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2026 (Upcoming): The now and then, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2023: Bygones be bygones or: what’s hidden in the snow will come to light by thaw, Kunstverein am Rosa Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, Germany

2022: object amnesic: a compost manifesto, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2019: refraction of lightness, Fondazione Morra, Palazzo Tarsia Spinelli, Naples, Italy

2019: Vertical Matter, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2018: Symbiopoiesis (solo installation with works in reference to selected pieces by Dieter Roth and Nam June Paik), Galerie Papillon, Paris, France

Selected Group Exhibitions

2024: Chart Copenhagen (Installation with Andreas Johnen presented by Dorothée Nilsson Gallery), Copenhagen, Denmark

2024: RIZZ/MAXX ’24 (curated by Erik Nordenhake), Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2023: Random Papers, 14°N 61°W, Espace D’art Contemporain, Fort De France, Martinique
2022: Sailors of the land, Buzzer Reeves, Berlin, Germany
2022: Vergoldet, Schloss Biesdorf, Berlin, Germany
2022: Vergoldet/Doré, Château Nyon, Switzerland

Selected Grants and Recognitions

2025: Production and implementation grant, Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, Munich, Germany

2023: Kemmler Foundation Investigation Grant, Berlin, Germany

2022: Stiftung Kunstfonds Research Stipendium, Bonn, Germany
2020: Blow Up Press, BUP Book Award 2020, Warsaw, Poland

2020: Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, Munich, Germany

2017: AArtist Residency, The Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), Berlin, Germany

Selected Collections
Art’us Collective Collection, Berlin, Germany
Sammlung Hackelsberger, Berlin, Germany
Nicoletta Rusconi Collection, Milan, Italy
M+M Collective, Basel, Switzerland

Public Art Agency – Swedish Ministry of Culture (Statens Konstråd), Sweden
Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy
Ann Wolff Foundation, Berlin, Germany
Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, Munich, Germany