Kim Chang-ok: Traces of Comfort explores the traces that time, repetition, and waiting leave through the material of ottchil. The exhibition does not approach ottchil as a traditional craft or a display of technical mastery. For Kim Chang-ok, ottchil is less an inherited craft tradition than a material he has chosen to give form to his own time and thought.

The wrinkles, contractions, and fissures that emerge as the lacquer dries are not treated as flaws, but remain as surfaces shaped by nature and time. The marks that accumulate across each work suggest that wounds, failures, anxiety, and waiting are also part of what makes up life.