Vincent Bal’s “First Glass Air Travel” / Courtesy of the artist
Artist and filmmker Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist
What won Belgian artist and filmmaker Vincent Bal his 1.17 million Instagram followers? Shadows.
More precisely, his whimsical illustrations are born from the quirky silhouettes cast by everyday objects. With just a few strokes of ink, he brings out the unexpected stories and characters tucked inside them.
In his hands, hair shears become a suit-donning gentleman; a cheese slicer turns into a lightsaber wielded by Yoda; and dried chilis morph into a reveler dancing with arms flung skyward. In one drawing, even an ordinary pair of metal tongs gets its own comic twist, its shadow transformed into a taekwondo athlete shaking his ankle in pain after a brick-breaking attempt, accompanied by a Korean phrase that reads “It hurts a lot.”
Vincent Bal’s “Yoda vs Gouda” / Courtesy of the artist
While social media has long been Bal’s playground to share his inventive craft with tongue-in-cheek titles, the artist’s doodles stepped into the real world in 2022 with “The Art of Shadow,” his first-ever solo exhibition. The show drew more than 80,000 visitors as it traveled through Seoul, Daejeon and Busan.
This month, Bal has returned to Museum 209 in southern Seoul for his second show, “Shadowgram.”
Installation view of Vincent Bal’s exhibition, “Shadowgram,” at Museum 209 in southern Seoul / Courtesy of Dcommunication
What sets the brick-and-mortar exhibition apart from his usual online engagement?
“The nice thing about social media is that the bar is very low and it’s easy to communicate with people. But being able to see them for real was fantastic,” Bal told The Korea Times, Wednesday, as he and his team made last-minute adjustments to the installation.
“Seeing that moment where they get the joke in the drawing, watching the reactions on their faces in real time — that’s very funny,” he added.
“One of the great revelations is realizing that people all around the world are very much the same. Everybody likes a certain kind of humor; it doesn’t depend on what country or culture you’re from. Some things are simply universal. It’s a relief in a way, because some politicians want to tell us that people from other countries are so different. I don’t think that’s true.”
Vincent Bal’s “Power Clamp” / Courtesy of the artist
Vincent Bal’s “Taekwondo Tongs” / Courtesy of the artist
Bal began his “Shadowology” series — a term he coined to give his craft a more “scientific” ring — in 2016, when he transformed the odd little shadow cast by a teacup he’d bought in Vietnam, one with a comically shaped handle, into a tiny elephant.
Nearly a decade has passed since then, yet his creative momentum shows no sign of slowing. New ideas continue to spring from chance encounters with objects tucked around his home, perched on thrift-shop shelves, or waiting in hotel rooms — like the time the silhouette of hotel coffee pods morphed into an undercover detective with his nose buried in a newspaper.
Sometimes, the same object reveals fresh possibilities years later. The artist recalls returning to a staple remover. First, it became a dog howling at the moon; then, a few years on, around John Lennon’s birthday, it reappeared as Lennon himself, strumming a guitar.
“I’m still amazed every day at how just a tiny change in the position of a lamp or an object can really change the shadow and bring out some peculiar new shape,” he said.
At “Shadowgram,” the silhouettes of the “gat,” the traditional Korean horsehair hat, are reimagined as wide-eyed monsters. Courtesy of Dcommunication
At “Shadowgram,” most of the 120 works on view are prints of Bal’s witty shadow images created since his last show. Alongside them are physical installations, both large and small, that bring his 2D drawings to life by casting real shadows.
It also introduces a stylistically distinct series he debuted at his Paris solo exhibition last year. Titled “Shadows on the Silver Screen,” the drawings pay homage to scenes from films he loves, from “Singin’ in the Rain” to “The Big Lebowski,” hinting at his parallel creative life as a filmmaker.
A final treat awaits Korean audiences toward the end of the Seoul presentation.
The shadows of the country’s folding fans give rise to graceful dancers in red heels, while the silhouettes of the “gat,” the traditional Korean horsehair hat, are reimagined as wide-eyed monsters — a playful nod to its recent pop-cultural revival in “KPop Demon Hunters.”
“Shadowgram,” which opened Friday, runs through June 14, 2026, at Museum 209.