Short Summary

Between origin and arrival, Savina Seo has cultivated a distinctive artistic language – at times quiet, at times resonant, always layered and deeply rooted in her inner world. Her work unfolds in the space between sculpture and painting, past and present. What once began as a search has become an affirmation of self-determination and creative strength. Through her art, Seo opens spaces – for memory, transformation, and new ways of seeing.

Family of Plaster: Art as a Response to Personal History

In the heart of Zurich, right by the train station, Savina Seo has been creating her artworks since moving into her studio there in 2023. And here they stand: the rounded, soft, gently appealing sculptures. Placed together on a table by the large windowfront, overlooking the busy city, are Seelenwesen (Soul Beings, 2025) – white plaster figures that glow brightly in the light-flooded room. They were created as part of a commission for the sculpture park at Villa Mettlen in Muri, where they will soon be exhibited as a group and made available for purchase. Already in the studio, the figures cluster closely together – like a quiet, strong, and self-contained community.

The figures were first pre-shaped from Styrofoam, then built up and modeled layer by layer with special plaster and filler. Compared to painting, Seo explains, the process of working on such sculptural pieces is far more time-intensive. For this reason, wax casts of the originals were made, allowing reproductions to be created on request. Collectors can select both the material and the constellation of figures – for example, bronze casts, valued for their weather resistance. This is also why the original works in the sculpture park will be displayed under a pavilion – as plaster cannot withstand the elements.

During the creation of the Seelenwesen, Seo – who usually works from intuition – developed the idea of forming a family. One of the figures is even named after her: Savi. As a child, the artist herself never had a “real” family. At the age of three, she was adopted from South Korea by a single Swiss mother – she had been an abandoned child. What was absent in her childhood, she has now created through art: a family, shaped with tenderness and emotion, an intimate bond made visible in sculptural form.

The figures all stand in relation to one another, each distinct in shape and size, yet connected through the whiteness and texture of plaster. For this reason, Seo does not sell the originals individually – they are inseparable, they belong together. Instead, she offers limited editions in plaster or bronze, making her art accessible to a wider audience while preserving the integrity of the ensemble. This approach creates freedom for collectors, who can choose their preferred material, while ensuring that the conceptual essence of her work remains intact – the ensemble reveals its full impact only as a whole.

The Medium Shapes the Effect – The Transformability of Seo’s Art

Earlier works, some of which hang on the walls behind the sculptures, radiate the same brightness and calm that runs like a thread through Seo’s oeuvre. Gentle, cloud-like fields of color open up dreamlike worlds – interrupted by metallic accents that merge into the soft gradients. Metals appear again and again in her practice: in bronze sculptures, but also in the delicate gold elements embedded in paintings. A remnant, perhaps, from her earlier training as a goldsmith. Some bronze sculptures are polished so smoothly they shimmer like gold. The metal captures and reflects everything around it like a mirror, while also distorting it. It is a play of perception and material, of light and form.

What distinguishes Seo’s work, alongside her technical skill, is her artistic adaptability – often driven by practical considerations that open new creative pathways. Scale, for instance: her works should not be too large or heavy, so they remain transportable. This partly explains her preference for plaster – light, but fragile. To preserve the sculptural forms while giving them new expressive qualities, she has also had certain works cast in aluminum. These pieces gain stability as well as a new aesthetic presence. Special silicone molds, created for individual works rather than serial production, allow Seo to revisit and further develop selected pieces or reproduce them on commission. This open, process-oriented approach continuously expands her artistic vocabulary. Her work remains fluid, adaptable, and receptive to new contexts – the medium itself determines the effect.

Though Seo has also created many two-dimensional works, her sculptural sensibility is always visible. In her paintings, color is not simply applied, but modeled layer by layer – sometimes subtle, sometimes pronounced. She describes the process as magnetic, an organic growth of the image. Out of this impulse came Selene (2021), a monumental moon. The piece was first modeled in clay, then transformed into plaster molds, from which positive casts were produced and mounted on canvas. With filler, the surface was built up into a relief before being painted layer by layer in acrylic. The result: a work of striking depth and texture, captivating the viewer and highlighting the tactile power of the materials. Seo’s paintings are poetic mirrors of feeling and memory, shaped by the sensual presence of matter.

Through scale and materiality, the distant moon suddenly becomes tangible. Its heaviness brings it literally down to earth – without dispelling its aura. The rough surface may not resemble the real moon’s texture, but it conveys an intimate nearness, an almost physical presence.

Seo later reinterpreted the moon painting as a high-resolution photographic print against a black background, producing Moon (Selene) (2024). Here, the metamorphosis of her work becomes visible once again: the print generates a completely different presence, shifting the meaning of the original.

While the original relief emphasizes structure and materiality, in the photograph the moon appears almost naturalistic – as if captured directly in the night sky. The high-resolution print heightens the illusion, transporting the work into another reality. Seo presented the plaster moon alongside its symbolic counterpart Helios (2021) – the sun. While the moon floats quietly in darkness, the sun erupts radiant and forceful, banishing night and heralding morning. Seo describes this as an emotional phase: through the moon she processed darkness, through the sun, hope.

A Gaze into the Distance

This gaze upward – inspiring awe and smallness – is reversed in Polar Fjord (2021). Instead of looking to the heavens, the perspective turns downward from above, revealing an abstracted landscape shaped in flowing forms painted with delicate glaze techniques. The panorama suggests immensity, yet also the incomprehensible. It reminds us of our own smallness before nature’s forces – an experience that can trigger both humility and serenity. Seo’s painterly style blends seamlessly with her sculptural work: many pieces feel cast from the same mold, subdued in earthy tones with fluid transitions between surface and form. She now ventures gradually into stronger colors, which reveal depth slowly, inviting viewers to immerse themselves.

This gradual embrace of color is striking in Furioso (2024). Painted in vibrant red – evoking pulsing life – the work greets visitors at the Permanence Medical Center below her Zurich studio. There, numerous works by Seo hang, transforming the space with atmosphere, intimacy, and poetic resonance.

This adaptability to space reflects not only her artistic versatility but also her sensitivity to environment. Just as she experiments with different materials, Seo engages with the spaces her art inhabits, transforming them. Her artistic stance is clear: she seeks out places for her work, ensuring it is visible, accessible, and experienced. Exhibiting regularly, she works with persistence and discipline on new projects. For her, art is not only expression but also a continual engagement with space, material, and meaning.

The Courageous Step Toward Independence as an Artist

Seo devotes enormous energy to her art, though it has not yet become her sole livelihood. Trained as a goldsmith and tailor, she also qualified as a dental hygienist – a background that provides stability and allows her to pursue her artistic career with freedom.

Her decision to commit to art came during the pandemic, a period of isolation that became a turning point. It offered the time and space for self-reflection and the discovery of her artistic voice. Since then, she has followed this path with determination. Her new studio at Limmatstrasse 25, opened in 2023, provided fresh perspective and inspiration.

The uncertainty of the pandemic thus marked a decisive moment. Before that, Seo often traveled to Korea in search of her origins, even initiating a legal name change to reclaim her Korean surname “Seo” in place of her Swiss one – a symbolic act of reconnection. Art, meanwhile, had been her constant: encouraged by her adoptive mother, a violinist, despite a strained family relationship. When travel became impossible, she began engaging more deeply with Switzerland, the country in which she was raised. “I gradually replaced Korea with my studio,” she says. The studio has become her new inner home, an anchor within her complex biography.

Arrival and Departure

Despite the geographical distance, Korean art and culture resonate strongly in Seo’s work. She has absorbed impressions from her travels, from books, and through artistic study – translating them into her own visual language. She sees in herself the Korean work ethic, tempered by a Swiss sense of balance.

Today, she feels no pressure to return to Korea, no sense of absence or loss. She has artistically processed the divide between origin and present – and moved beyond it. She has arrived in Switzerland, ready to move forward.

Her works – earthy, light, often evoking air, water, or light – are gaining palpable strength. They feel more open, determined, future-oriented. The Seelenwesen, too, reflect this: circling around questions of the past, of “what ifs,” of inner longing – while also expressing transformation, a conscious act of letting go, and a new orientation toward self-determined artistic belonging.

Visit Savina Seo’s profile to discover more of her works. Her studio can also be visited by appointment. Soon her art will be on view at the exhibition Timeless Traces (Zeitlose Spuren) at Galerie Toledo Art Studio in Zurich, September 16–21, 2025.