JUN HO CHO (DE/KR)
Text written by GHA
Born in South Korea, Jun Ho Cho now resides in Germany and paints playful compositions and scenes, with hard-hitting topics and titles.
Block colour backgrounds and complex compositions characterise Jun Ho Cho’s surrealist works. All of his acrylic paintings feature imaginative and almost dream-like characters, within small bubbles of action in the centre of the canvas.
His smooth and blended application creates scenes that seem almost digital from afar, but up close are somewhat chaotic and layered, featuring anonymous figures that overlap and interact with each other. Like a child in a toy shop, one is tempted by the bright colour pallet and alluring characters, desiring to reach out and grab the figures.
On closer inspection, however, one notices the intricate meanings behind each scene, and the figures appear distressed or often uncomfortable. This transformation is essential in understanding the works, allowing time to change one’s initial feelings towards pieces creates interaction between the viewer and the art.
Each painting’s focuses on difficult and personable subjects that vary in viewpoint from person to person. Titles such as ‘Puberty’, ‘Weight of life’ and ‘Refugee’ each describe personal experiences— perhaps Cho is depicting his own approaches to these topics or alternatively is responding to them with child-like ignorance. In his artworks, he focuses on mythical creatures, animals with humanistic features and film charcters enforces this idea of adolescent hindsight. His colour palette is equally as contrasting, appearing washed and pastel, further exploring this idea of a dream-scape or imaginary scenarios in conjunction with difficult topics.
Alongside the use of absence of faces, the viewer is invited to question whether his works are an expression of a dream or of reality.
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Refugees
