Through the slightest of material gestures Jong Oh reminds his audience of the nuances of the world around them. He points to subtle details that reveal how our hurried lives can lead to essential elements being overlooked.

 

Using humble supplies (thin metal or wood rods, sheets of Plexiglas, hand painted strings, found rocks and pebbles, and often incorporating shadows and graphite lines) he crafts sculptures that take on volumes greater than the sum of their component parts. They are not kinetic, but it is important for the audience to move around them. They are difficult to photograph, and in person they can take time to fully reveal themselves. Their ability to test perception is essential to Oh. Gravity, shadows, and reflections are relished collaborators.  They are often suspended in space. They feel like diagrams revealing unseen forces in a physics lab, but rather than charting known rules they are in fact intuitive gestures. They are poems that seek to refute jaded positions that it is all bad news out there.

 

The grids of Agnes Martin and restraint of Richard Tuttle are important influences for Oh. There can be immense beauty in the way light attaches to a wall, how it reflects, in a taught line and then an oblique angle.  Oh urges viewers to have the patience to look closely, not just at his work, but at the world after they leave his exhibitions.

 

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. He has had numerous museum shows in Europe, Asia and the US including the Seoul Museum of Art; Hudson Valley MOCA, NY; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; DeCordova Museum, MA; Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea; Museum SAN, Seoul, Korea. 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. Jong Oh is represented by MARC STRAUS in New York, Sabrina Amrani in Madrid, Jochen Hempel in Leipzig, Dan Gallery in Sao Paulo, and Timothy Hawkinson Gallery in Los Angeles.