Exhibition Text — Unfamiliarly Glittering, 2022

 

ENG ∣KOR

 

Unfamiliarly Glittering

 

 

Kim Jeong-dae, Director of INDIPRESS

 

 

Mystery seems to arise when one encounters a situation that is unfamiliar and previously unexperienced, and when that moment becomes linked to the perceiver’s ideal conception. It may also be understood as a pleasurable tremor that occurs when the imagination expands and becomes aware of a reality beyond prediction. Such a sense of mystery is often amplified from the first sign of “the unfamiliar.”

 

Artist Cho Eunjoung (b. 1978) seems to stand in the midst of life, absorbed in capturing such signs. Amid the countless images and issues of an age unlike any before it, the artist devotes herself to gazing at a moment that glitters in an unfamiliar way. The linguistic meanings found in her artist’s notes — such as “the fading beauty of memory” or “time passes in an instant, like a cheetah” — are often translated directly into painting. What is distinctive in her work is the way she uses various forms of metaphor to evoke the meanings of these forms.

 

In other words, rather than attempting to convey the direct aesthetic appeal of landscapes or objects, she brings them into the painting as mediums through which to express measurable capacities of perception or emotion, such as “faintness” or “instantaneity.” In order for the expression of such capacities to remain objective even to herself, and to draw out the viewer’s empathy, she sets in place the concept of “balance.” Remaining wary of excessive leaps in metaphor, she undertakes a difficult exploration: a delicate leap of consciousness grounded in realistic representation rather than in the distortion of images.

 

Ultimately, the artist’s act of painting actively invites linguistic recognition, moving toward a point where such recognition awakens not only her own reflections, but also a more universal contemplation in the viewer. One of the virtues of her work lies in the energy it carries, allowing us to look at everyday life in an affirmative way. What matters is not simply what has been painted, but what has been painted together, and what kind of relationship those elements form. That relationship is also the result of thought, reflecting the artist’s psychological state. Her beliefs and philosophy may also seep into it.

 

Cho’s will as an artist does not remain merely at the level of technical command, though one can sense the intensive training of her childhood and youth. Rather, her desire to contain the insights she has gained through everyday life emerges naturally on the canvas. The painter’s gaze toward the relationships formed between situations and objects leads us into a sense of illusion that momentarily draws us away from reality. And this illusion belongs to the mysterious realm of painting, a realm that artists have long explored with all five senses sharpened.

 

In the realm of language, nouns, adjectives, and verbs have the power to call forth images. Grammatical particles, however, cannot stand on their own; unexpectedly, they hold the key to defining relationships between forms. Sensing that this may also be a key to understanding Cho Eunjoung’s artistic world, one becomes newly curious about how the artist expresses the balance she so carefully attends to, as she intervenes in the fundamental visual elements that form the basis of images: dark and pale, hard and soft, thick and thin, long and short.