Living Things

Solo exhibition by Jung Soo Cho

July 6 – July 22, 2022

 

Often painting is a way of life and at the same time real life somehow determines the way of painting, the themes, the essence of the works.

For Jung Soo Cho, this organic and harmonious balance comes as a result of her daily work in the studio, resembling a research process where the objects of the research are not only the specific problems of painting, drawing or video but also personal identity, emotionality, the ability to reflect in an original and meaningful way on the surrounding reality.

The images that are born are close to the structure of poetic literary forms. There is a story, but it is not straightforward or unnecessarily detailed and narrative. There is an original composition and a beautiful form, without being manneristic. There are meanings without them being didactically or speculatively imposed on the viewer.

Jung Soo Cho uses the media quite consciously to communicate both with herself and with the everyday poetics of being.

She says that her works are: "self-portrait, still life and landscape at the same time." The objects talk about her current biography, and the "personal daily rituals" of the artist are “printed” on the objects themselves.

During her residency at Scope BLN, (February - August, 2022) Soo began working on the topic of "Green".

This is not about any kind of environmental activism or a discussion of the green consciousness of our contemporary society.

Typically, in her manner, she delves into indoor / outdoor "nature" to discover the secret vibrations of human communication with plants. At the same time, her paintings and drawings became something like a diary of her everyday life in Berlin, passing the seasons from winter to summer.

The palm tree living in the artist's room becomes the main character and inhabitant of this particular space. The life of the jasmine, bought from the flower shop, receives a special attention when it lives in the artist’s studio. The apple placed on the table acquires the meaning of an invariably present object and a metaphor of a person's emotional identity.

In these works, the real characters are the plants and, in their leaves, roots and stems are hidden sophisticated human experiences, desires, emotions, hopes or disappointments.

Life around us is undoubtedly one of the greatest phenomena of nature. At the same time, we so seldom think about the wonders of the organic world and how it defines us as existence / beings.

Jung Soo Cho builds the ability to understand this miracle by communicating directly with the nature, which we often see only as a background of everyday life. In fact, she even paints the background of her paintings first, as a stand-alone object that surrounds the main objects and only later she concentrates on the objects themselves.

Living Things exhibition, which includes paintings, drawings and video has the meaning of a document of one period of the artist's career, but also a document of almost invisible movements of the inner life of plants, objects, light or air.

 

Text: Boris Kostadinov

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Artist"s web site:  art portfolio (readymag.com)