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Exhibition view of Live Rooftop: Yeojwa Headquarters Ⅱ (Warehouse Gallery, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2020). Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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The Body Called Structure

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His eyes often reached the structure composed from elements of architectural phenomenon. When his eyes touched the structure, they became the camera frame and aperture–the structure reconstructed within them. It was nearly similar to the composition of the non-representational relief, as experimented with by LARIONOV, MALEVICH, TATLIN, Picasso, GABO, LISSITZKY, KANDINSKY, and others. Here, the phenomenon’s ‘some elements’ do not appear different from how Russian constructivists boldly utilized “metal, glass, and other modern industrial new materials” as pictorial or design images. It looked as if his reinterpretation of photography was a reference to the constructivist concept of “rejecting Realism and taking the creative attitude to create a new form of beauty based on the rational and reasonable composition of the mechanical and geometrical form.” In his portfolio sent to me, the photography works from 2012 and 2016 strongly demonstrate this constructivist inclination. However, there is a pitfall in that this is nothing but a ‘similar’ impression. The portfolio contains works through 2019, and all of the works in between, over the five to six years, reverse the constructivist mission of “rejecting all elements of descriptive representation and aiming for the composition of pure form, therefore, taking a geometrical abstract direction in painting or sculpture, and forming a space or environment rather than art as self-expression.” or crosses it relentlessly by flattering it. The problem is, while Constructivism is born with a 2-dimensional geometrical image called painting, his photographs directly embody/shoot actual 3-dimensional space. The ‘composition-space’ in the photographs exists as a body called ‘structure’ and is a phenomenon. Therefore, his photographs deserve to be called the (existing) body of structures, not the abstraction of structures.

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Exhibition view of Live Rooftop: Yeojwa Headquarters Ⅱ(Warehouse Gallery, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2020). Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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Exhibition view of Live Rooftop: Yeojwa Headquarters Ⅱ (Warehouse Gallery, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2020). Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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The Depth of Here and There

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At first glance, his photographs are pictorial (as I alluded to them as an impression above). The surprisingly vivid ‘colors, planes, and lines’ that compose the picture, as well as the shadows of the objects, heighten the image to the level of Hyperrealism. They are read as if the constructivist attitude to reject every descriptive element of representation is restrained or was not even considered at all. The photographs are full of the tangible surface of the objects, which have colors, planes, lines, and shadows, and the positioning of objects stuck together, leaning upon one another, pushed, and pulled in gravitational space, all quite realistic. When you take a few steps closer to the works to look at their details (or depth), you are surprised by the facts that the objects in the image are composed of an assemblage of ridiculously raw, rough, and less sophisticated things, and that the photographs are actually the result of placing the compositional elements the space of the camera’s frame, with nothing to do with the geometrical abstract. The images are the result of the capturing of the camera lens, a mixture of the unintentional nature of the repetitive objects themselves and the intentional artificiality of the artist’s use of compositional elements. Interestingly, the power of the constructivist aesthetics as an initial impression is mighty. Because of the visual distraction generated by “the pictorial impression–the reality inside the photo-the depth of the objects” which operate simultaneously, the constructivism that denies ‘the art of self-expression’ loses its position. I think that very moment of loss is where CHO Kyoungjae’s art world is conceived once again, as his photographs present a wholly different aesthetic concept by gaining the ‘depth of objects’ in reality, which was not conceived in Constructivism.

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Exhibition view of Yeojwa Headquarters (SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2020). Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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The Works that Erase ‘and’ in ‘Photography and Reality’

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In 2012, he showed ㅁㄱ 002. The photograph and installation are displayed in tandem, and the grid of ‘ㅁ’ and the line of ‘ㄱ’ connect the photographs together on a white wall. This prompts us to consider the ‘double structure’ of the gaze in response to the way the photographs are glued to the wall and connected to the picture frames. The photograph itself is a frame and, by placing it within another picture frame, the artist’s hidden strategy prompts us to perceive the double structure of the aesthetic reality (the photo) and the realistic reality (the picture frame) as ‘one’ structure. This intention is more specified in the case of Block Block (2014). The photograph and objects appear to be freely composed (of course they are directed and installed meticulously by the artist). This work, in which ‘the reality in the photo’ and ‘the objects in reality’ compose a space, is an experiment that erases the ‘and’ in the elements. In this regard, the keyword ‘photography and reality’ should be called ‘photography reality’ as the title is ‘Block Block’ instead of ‘Block and Block’. Thus, his project is to integrate the double structure the work of photography-the scene of reality into a unified structure. But, is it possible for the aesthetic event of photography to become reality and reality to become photography? As a matter of fact, Block Block, shown in 2014, is only an installation of the photo as an artwork and the directing method of the objects, which make the photo possible. The two look like a mixture or integration, but they are clearly different. However, his attempts have continued since then, revealing his unique world of photography and its generation of ‘conceptual wells’.

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Garden, 2020, Mixed media, Variable dimension (700×700cm)

Exhibition view of Yeojwa Headquarters (SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2020)

Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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The Surface of the Well

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The serene and transparent surface of the well makes the scenery of the two layers become one perfect reality. In the tradition of East Asia, it is ‘jeonshinsajo (the concept of conveying the spirit by reproducing the appearance when drawing portraits)’ that is the aesthetic origin of the mythical structure of the well. In other words, reality is the time when the outside appearance that is reflected on the surface of the well and the abyss (innate world) under the surface are represented at the same time and become ‘one’. CHO Kyoungjae began his experiment of integrating objects and photography within his installations in 2016. When his on-site installation and photography are not divided semantically, the audience may become confused. As their eyes do not operate like the camera’s eyes there is no certain quadrangle frame. “What and how should I read the artist’s intentions?” This question trails them through the exhibition space creating a sense of confusion. Depending on the site and exhibition space itself, it is also characteristic of the artist to reveal the compositional installation and the artwork through directing the audience through the space. Confusion ensues around whether his work is questioning your way of seeing or you are implicitly experiencing what he intended. However, one thing that is clear is that there is a certain point, sight, and scene, which can be sensed as continuously connected. Because the surface layer and the depth are produced within one space, even the photograph operates as an object within the frame. The composition and imagination of the dependent origination, “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist,” is vivid within the reality the objects show. “Giving birth to and turning to new things,” the system of the composition and the truth that is generated give rise to memories (temporality) of the objects and brings them into contact with the strange memory of reality.

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Exhibition view of Photographers of the Year, the 12th KT&G SKOPF (GoEun Museum of Photography, Busan, 2020)

Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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Here/There, This Life/Afterlife, This World Is, Nirvana Is,

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The exhibition Live Rooftop: Yeojwa Headquarters Ⅱ held at Incheon Art Platform in 2020 is connected to the exhibition Broken Edges at Project Space SARUBIA in 2017. In both cases you can see “the pursuit of variable and improvisational sensation.” However, I also wonder if the artist may have completely blown off the topics derived from his use of photography in Live Rooftop. The recent exhibition is unconcerned with compositional installation, directed composition, scene of the frame, spots and gaze, and enables the audience to ‘intervene’ inside of the space. The biggest change was that the concept of the transitive verb was turned into the concept of an intransitive verb, as well as the addition of GG Ludens’ performance and video, which cut into the operations of the installation space in order to make it come ‘alive’. The presence of memories which could not be captured within photographs were called out and stacked momentarily. Paradoxical! It must be photography that is the stacked moments that serve as the existence of memories, but photography is nowhere and only the memories are left, like printed afterimages in the mind. The collapsing of the boundary between photography and reality means that the aesthetic reality and the existential reality collide to reveal the aura of ‘myth’ in raw condition. There is no state of ‘here and there’ or ‘this life and afterlife’, as the imagination is not imagination, but reality. Perhaps he is nihilating the notion and concept of aesthetics by shaking them or weaving the reticulation of the imaginative collective, which induces the audience to multiply their imagination inside the artist’s realization of his own imagination.

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※ This content was first published in 『2020 Incheon Art Platform Residency Program Catalogue』, and re-published here with the consent of Incheon Art Platform