Exhibition Text — Orbit, 2026

ENG ∣ KOR

 

 

‘Otbit’ 

 

 

Shin Hee Won (Gallery Doll  Curator)

 

 

Cho Eunjoung’s recent body of work, the Orbit Series, begins with a question: how does inner balance take shape, and how can it be sustained? The forms that populate her paintings are clearly delineated, yet they evoke an unfamiliar sensation that seems to extend beyond everyday reality. Poised between recognition and estrangement, they establish a visual logic of their own.

 

Here, balance does not refer to a fixed state of harmony. Rather, it describes a condition in which different emotions and beings remain in relation without either fully colliding or drifting irretrievably apart. Cho visualizes this relational structure through the concept of orbit. In her work, an orbit is not simply a trajectory around a single center. It is a relational order structured and sustained by distance, allowing distinct presences to remain alongside one another without destabilizing the relation between them.

 

Cho’s earlier paintings centered on the tension between reality and fantasy. Objects set against forested landscapes, together with figures inhabiting dreamlike environments, appeared as traces of a desire directed toward something beyond reality. The pictorial space functioned as a psychological stage where the pressures of reality intersected with unconscious fantasy. Marked by an intensely personal perspective, the objects in these works existed as inaccessible cores of desire, while the paintings themselves were deeply structured by lack and longing. This world can be read through a Freudian lens in which reality regulates desire, while fantasy gives form to repressed impulses.

 

With the emergence of the Orbit Series, however, Cho’s attention shifts from desire itself to the ways in which relationships are formed. The planets in these paintings are not remote objects to be reached in outer space. They coexist within a shared pictorial field, maintaining a measured distance from one another. In doing so, they register the relational intervals between one emotion and another, and between one person and another.

 

What matters is not what each planet represents, but the distance and rhythm produced between them. A relationship cannot be sustained when its participants are either too distant or excessively close. The balance Cho describes is therefore not a state achieved by an isolated individual. Rather, inner balance emerges as different beings continually adjust their relation to one another and negotiate the distance between them.

 

The planets move alongside a cat and drift through gardens, arcades, and spaces above water, continually entering new relational configurations. Their movement reveals that an appropriate distance is never fixed. It changes according to the beings involved, the surrounding space, and the particular rhythm of each encounter.

 

This transformation may also be understood within the broader development of psychoanalytic thought. While Freud often approached unconscious life through the interpretation of symbolic formations, Melanie Klein focused on the process through which the infant initially experiences the object as divided into “good” and “bad,” before gradually recognizing and integrating these opposing qualities as aspects of the same object. Donald Winnicott developed this relational perspective further by describing a transitional space between reality and fantasy, self and other—a space in which play and interaction contribute to the formation of the self.

 

What is crucial in this context is not the existence of a perfect object, but the psychological space that allows a relationship to continue without intrusion or engulfment. Cho’s recent paintings, with their brighter palette and increasingly fluid spatial structures, suggest how relationships might be sustained under such conditions. They also convey a growing sense of inner stability.

 

Rather than inviting the interpretation of isolated symbols, Cho’s paintings direct attention toward the process through which heterogeneous forms come together to compose a scene. Palaces and stairways, arcades and planets, trees and water remain clearly recognizable, yet none is confined to a single meaning. Within the pictorial field, these elements respond to one another, accommodate one another’s presence, and generate a new landscape.

 

The spaces that open beyond arched doorways do not function as boundaries separating reality from fantasy. Instead, they become sites where different emotions and memories may temporarily settle, giving rise to new forms of perception. Bringing together stillness and movement, stability and transformation, these spaces accommodate the uncertainty of life while suggesting the possibility that distinct beings may inhabit a shared world.

 

The recurring gardens, arcades, spaces above water, and subterranean architectural structures are likewise more than scenic backgrounds. They function as interior terrains where emotions settle and circulate, as well as protected spaces capable of accommodating different forms of existence. Like Winnicott’s concept of the “holding environment,” Cho’s spaces do not eliminate anxiety. Rather, they provide the conditions in which emotional experience can be sustained without collapse or fragmentation. Under these conditions, the planets neither collide nor disperse entirely.

 

Ultimately, balance in the Orbit Series is neither complete nor permanent. It is an ongoing process of recalibration, unfolding through continual shifts and adjustments that sustain relationships. Through the orbits of her planets, Cho considers how human beings negotiate appropriate distances—both in relation to others and in relation to their own emotions.

 

Reality and fantasy, consciousness and the unconscious, isolation and connection no longer operate solely as opposing forces. Without invading or erasing one another, they coexist within a single pictorial field. Cho’s paintings thus quietly propose inner balance not as a final resolution, but as a relational condition that is continually formed and renewed.