Hidden Layers: Infrastructural Seoul and the Invisible Narrative

Seoul thrives along the great artery of the Han River. This river, which cuts through the heart of the metropolis, is not merely a natural boundary, but a vital line that divides and reconnects the city’s north and south. Spanning its breadth are twenty-seven grand bridges, linked by the Olympic Highway to the south and the Gangbyeonbuk-ro to the north—networks that function less as mere transportation routes and more as the nervous system of this sprawling megacity.In Hidden Layers, artist Jin-ha Park does not regard these infrastructural elements as mere functional structures. Instead, through the lens of contemplative inquiry, he explores their ontological weight, their material aesthetic, and the strata of time that cling invisibly to their forms. Much like an anatomist who incises the body to understand the secret workings of life, Park dissects the network of bridges and roadways to reveal the city’s hidden layers.The artist overlays his vision both as an artist and as an architect, examining the bridges’ structural surfaces—their upper constructions, the textures and patterns of their roadways, the rhythmic articulation of their spaces—as well as the engineering aesthetics of their substructures, the visual framing of forms, and the continuous and overlapping layers embedded within them. His practice narrates a slow, attentive reading of the city’s unfolding surfaces through the transitions of day and night.Park’s images are not passive recordings; they are acts of spatial crystallisation and dimensional vision. He meticulously uncovers the strata—juxtaposed, accumulated, hidden—and reconfigures their latent structures and temporal fragments. Bridges, pillars, and beams are unearthed with an almost archaeological precision, their invisible histories distilled into sensory form. It is a visualisation of the city's silent logic, an excavation of its unconscious, executed through perceptual deconstruction and reconstruction.In these photographs, the bridge is at once a monumental landscape and a signifier of the city’s underlying order and rhythm. Repetitive concrete columns, the intersections of verticals and horizontals, and the play of light and shadow weaving through them operate as an architectural language, revealing an unconscious geometry within the city’s corporeal frame. Such structures are not merely spatial partitions; they become vessels of time, enabling events and harbouring memory.Visually rigorous yet emotionally resonant, Hidden Layers invites the viewer to sense, in Bernard Tschumi’s terms, the collision of space and event. Within the ostensibly inert concrete and steel, the city’s myriad narratives are silently unfolding.

Through these familiar yet unremarked structures, Park reveals Seoul’s temporal depths and the spectrum of urban sensation.Through his work, Jin-ha Park reads Seoul—this megacity, this megastructure, this megaculture—with an unflinching clarity, recording its essence as a testament to our present epoch. His exploration ultimately converges upon a profound question: What city are we truly living in? Or more urgently, Within the vast apparatus of the city, what do we perceive—and what do we overlook?Park’s gaze does not remain aloof; rather, it draws forth the submerged meanings lying dormant beneath the overpasses and pillars. He restores to us the rare ability to read the city anew—to recognise its silent architectures and hidden emotional geographies.Through his images, we confront the unseen layers beneath the skin of Seoul: the physical, historical, and emotional frameworks through which the city is shaped, operates, and endures.