LOS ANGELES, CA.- A few lengths of hand-painted strings, some monofilament lines that quickly disappear, an impossibly thin chain or two. Most of Jong Oh’s materials could fit into one closed fist when disassembled and feel pretty unremarkable. However, once he assembles them into constellations floating in space they feel infinite. Solid and knowing, revealing hitherto unknown information. Clueing their audience into the universal and hinting at the foundations of reality.
They ultimately seek to gently recalibrate how the audience sees the subtle details of life when they leave the exhibition space.
Jong Oh’s sculptures take a moment to notice. They aren’t kinetic, but they do prompt viewers to move themselves around the pieces to fully see or understand them. Their overall precision makes them initially seem fully pre-planned, from blueprints or schematics checked and rechecked. Closer inspection shows they are handmade, usually with almost invisible hand tied knots, and their generation is mostly intuitive. From just a few loose pen lines sketched out, Oh makes most decisions as he installs. They court light, shadows, and gravity, making them materials in the work.
After years of increasingly dematerialized pieces Oh has allowed a few more physically present materials back into his world. Warmly toned, but still restrained, lengths of natural walnut, tiny blue marbles, and slight curves of neon placed floating asymmetrically. As with his other material choices, they are somehow activated by Jong’s slight touch, unmoored from their ordinary existence. The subtle light elements seem like punctuation marks, molding the space, framing unseen structures or languages.
Through exact proportions, passages of tautness or slack, perfect counterweights and balances, and a refusal to include any more than the most essential features he makes the seeing the world feel fresh, slightly different, better.
Jong Oh was born in Mauritania and grew up between Spain and South Korea. He earned his BFA from Hongik University in Seoul and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
In the wake of his previous exhibition here in LA his work was acquired by the Nelson Atkins Museum (Kansas City), the Santa Barbara Museum, and the Orange County Museum of Art. They joined other institutions whose collections include his work: National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation (Michigan), Fundación Otazu (Spain), and Song Eun Art and Cultural Foundation (Seoul).
He currently lives and works in Seoul. His work has been featured in several one and two person museum and institution exhibitions in recent years, at: Seoul Museum of Art (South Korea), deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Massachusetts), Perigee Gallery (Seoul), Art in General - Musee Minuscule (New York), CR Collective (Seoul), DOOSAN Gallery (Seoul and NY), ChoiManLin Museum (Seoul), and University of Connecticut’s Contemporary Art Galleries. He has participated in museum and institution group exhibitions at: ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Germany), National Asian Culture Center (Gwangju), Art Sonje Center (Seoul), Spiral (Tokyo), ARTER (Istanbul), BRIC (New York), Busan Museum of Art (South Korea), Deoksugung Palace (Seoul), GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst (Germany), Hudson Valley MOCA (New York), Museum SAN (South Korea), Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (Germany), Centro Cultural Casa de Vacas (Madrid), Korean Cultural Center (Washington DC), among others. He has had solo gallery exhibitions with One & J gallery in Seoul, MARC STRAUS in New York, Sabrina Amrani in Madrid, Krinzinger Projekte in Vienna, Lora Reynolds in Austin, and Jochen Hempel in Berlin and Leipzig.
