Y. J. Cho - Wall Shadows |
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October 26 - November 27, 2002
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 26 3:00pm - 5:00pm
Y.J. Cho has been using walls as the subject for her creative work for several decades; looking at walls, reading walls, painting walls. Y.J. Cho has used walls of various forms and textures to record time's passage, and over time for the artist walls have gradually come to assume the role of silent testimony-bearers.
This particular group of small paintings-the wall diaries-is the artist's reflection and visual expression of her travels in Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan, as well as her sojourn to Taiwan's peaceful East Coast. The wall surfaces provide a historical record-like relics of one's individual treasure hunt. Among them the hints of greenery climbing up old walls can suggest spring and the images of fleeting light and reflections adhere like giant claws to cracks on the wall. There is loneliness in the shadows of fallen city walls, and a hazy vastness of historical events that seem to rise from their dappled patterns. Y.J. Cho's long, singular love affair with walls has gradually turned them into a stage onto which she projects the reflections of her mind, making her photographic record of walls into a diary of observations and reflections where the painter's physical eye meets the mind's eye.
This "wall diary" is the artist's record of a certain day of a certain month of a certain year, containing within its realistic depiction an abstract feeling. In the twenty-first century, when it is very rare for an artist to take pictures, paint and live on the move, Y.J. Cho's exquisite technique of meticulously detailed depiction may well be a reflection of her life-long "oath of alliance" with walls. In the age of self-expression, Y.J. Cho uses walls in place of words, thus embodying the restraint and reserve of East Asian women. But she is an artist who lives in New York and is immersed in its art world, so this is her self-affirming, determined choice.
O.K. HARRIS GALLERY
383 West Broadway, New York, NY 10012
Tel.: (212) 431-3600: Fax: (212) 925-4797