A Japanese artist collective that treats pop-culture figurines as raw material is getting its first solo exhibition in Korea. Whitestone Gallery Seoul presents three is a magic number 23, a show by the group known as three, on view from October 17 through November 29, 2026. The exhibition gathers earlier and new works that probe the relationship between the individual and the collective, and between image and material.

three works with the most disposable objects of contemporary visual culture: mass-produced figurines from anime, manga, and popular entertainment. The artists cut them apart, melt them down, and rearrange the fragments into new compositions. Recognizable faces and costumes survive in pieces, but individual identities dissolve into fields of color. The process mirrors how images circulate online, where distinct thoughts and pictures converge into collective formations, fragile in the bonds that hold them together.

Among the works on view is 77V type 18.85kg TRANS (2026), a large wall-based piece in aluminum, PVC, figure parts, and wood measuring 258 by 72 by 80 centimeters. In the circular work 3234g, the artists vary how deeply the figurines are melted across the surface, creating shifting cross-sections that suggest objects sinking into one another in virtual space. The V series takes its dimensions from real television and phone screens, treating the screen as the boundary between image and physical thing and giving that boundary material form.

New TRANS works extend the idea further, introducing multiple cuts across each surface and shifting the sections by equal increments to produce variations in depth. Characters become figurines, and figurines become new artworks, yet traces of each original identity remain. The exhibition offers a wry, tactile meditation on how pop imagery absorbs and erases the self at the same time.