About Yongshin Cho
Yongshin Cho is a global artist who has worked both in Seoul, South Korea and Paris, France for the past forty years. Cho received his BFA in painting at Hongik University, followed by another BFA and MFA at the Université Paris. In 1995, he was invited to be a part of the International Video and Multimedia Art Festival where he garnered critical acclaim. After that, Cho continued to become involved in notable projects, artists residencies, and teaching. He was also featured in many exhibitions in France, such as the Grand Palais, and Salon of France International Fine-art Society, Biennale d’art Contemporain; in Korea at the Whanki Museum, Gwangju Biennale, and PICAF International Contemporary Art Exhibition; and in United States at the Cleveland Internation Drawing Contest & Exhibit, Queens College, and Riverside Gallery. Cho’s works have been heavily informed by the experience of living through the brutality of the Gwangju Uprising. With that context, Cho uses his medium to take a critical look at social, political, and cultural structures that incur injustice and inequality.
New Brunswick Art Salon 2020 – All Media: “Configured Personas”
Artist Personal Website: https://www.youtube.com/user/vr4477
Email: vr4477@naver.com
Artist Statement
My works take a critical view of social, political, and cultural systems and structures that produce injustice, inequality, conflicts, and brutality. My experience of brutality in the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 made me turn to these aspects of the society for my artwork. In Gwangju Uprising, Gwangju citizens took up arms when the local students who were demonstrating against the authoritarian military regime were fired upon, beaten and killed by the government troops.
Before I went to Paris in 1987, my main media were brush and paint. I was focusing on drawing and painting human bodies to show how the dictatorship in Korea created human sufferings. When I first arrived in Paris, I was thrilled at the fact that I was breathing the air of the street where the French Revolution overthrew the monarchy. The new environment made me explore new media, like TV monitors. At that time, I was interested in how manipulated news or information aired on TV could partialize or paralyze the judgement of the public. I began to use TV monitors as the main media for my works to express the theme. Later, beyond TV monitors, I adopted projectors for a larger screen in depicting conflicts, divisions, and contradictions of the society and incorporated installations and performance in my works.
In my work, I deconstruct historical, political, or social events and reconstruct them as symbolic images to reproduce unfamiliar visual images for an alienation effect. Often times I combine these themes into installations that feature overlapping video, laser, sound performance, or choreography to produce multi-layered themes. The theme of each artwork determines the materials and art forms I use. The human body plays a central role in my installations. I juxtapose a naked body at times with nature such as the ocean’s breaking waves or an open sky to deliver multi-layered meanings. Nakedness has two meanings in my work. One is a symbol of human beings as a subject suffering conflicts and schizophrenia in the process of struggling for survival; the other is a symbol of conflicts between instinctive desire and restrictions imposed by a social structure. Human beings are instinctively pursue good to be happy: freedom, justice, and equality. However, the social structure we are living in is not structured in the way those good things prevail. This gap between human desire and social structure causes conflicts and schizophrenia.
Exhibitions
2019 ‘One Night In June 2014’, Riverside Gallery, New Jersey, USA.
2019 Review: ‘Confronting Greed and Hypocrisy: Yongshin Cho’s New Solo Exhibition’ by Bill Wolak, New Jersey Stage, Aug. 9, 2019, https://www.newjerseystage.com/articles/getarticle.php?titlelink=riverside-gallery-presents-one-night-in-june-2014-by-yongshin-cho ‘작은 상자 속에 갇힌 소시민 사회의식 상징’, The Korea Times, Aug. 7, 2019 http://www.koreatimes.com/article/20190807/1262267
2018 ‘Remember’, Gallery Art Mora, New Jersey, USA.
2017 ‘Time, Body and Desire’, Riverside Gallery, New Jersey, USA.
2017 Interview: ‘The Drift of Desire: An Interview with Yongshin Cho’ by Bill Wolak, https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/visual-art/the-drift-of-desire-an-interview-with-yongshin-cho
2017 Review: ‘Yongshin Cho, Time, Body and Desire’ Newsroh, Nov. 17, 2017. http://www.okja.org/interview/76669
2017 ‘Yongshin Cho’s Video Art Exhibition’ The Korea Times, Nov. 17, 2017. http://m.koreatimes.com/article/20171110/1086857
2015 ‘Time, Body and Desire’, video sound installation, Klapper Hall Gallery, Queens College, CUNY, New York, USA.
2014 ‘Portrait of Time’, painting, Gallery Mielle, Seoul, Korea.
2014 ‘Digital Space’, video sound installation, Gallery Seoul Forest, Seoul, Korea.
2014‘Two Faces of New York’, video sound installation, Gallery Dasom, Seoul, Korea.
2014‘CAVE 141’, video sound installation, Gallery Dasom, Seoul, Korea.
2014‘Speed and Severance’, painting, Woohyunah Gallery, Seoul, Korea.
2014‘Passion and Cynicism’, painting, Gallery City, Seoul, Korea.
2013 ‘Fragments of Memory’, video sound installation, Gallery Daein, Gwangju, Korea.
2013‘Time, Space, Substance’, video sound installation, Eunam Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea.
2013 ‘X-BOX Story’, video sound installation, Eunam Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea.
2010 ‘Metamorphosis’, media performance, Hub City of Asian Culture GWANGJU, Gwangju, Korea.
2010‘Bodies in Dead Landscape’, video sound installation, Jami Gallery, Gwangju, Korea.
2009 ‘Betrayal of Class’, video sound installation, Yogiga Gallery, Seoul, Korea.
2008 ‘Underground’, video sound installation, Yogiga Gallery, Seoul, Korea.
2008 ‘Survival and Freedom’, video and objects installation, Gallery Dream, Seoul, Korea.
2008 ‘Time Watch’, video sound installation, Mudeung Gallery, Gwangju, Korea.
2007 ‘Other’, media installation, Gallery Team Preview, Seoul, Korea.
2006 ‘Metamorphosis’, Media Performance, Hosted by HCI Korea, Bogwang Phoenix Park, Korea.
2005 ‘Trauma’, media performance, EXCO Fashion Hall, Daegu, Korea.
2004 ‘Before Dawn – Memory’, video sound installation, Gwangju Video Arts Center, Gwangju, Korea.
2004‘Before Dawn’, video sound installation, Lotte Gallery, Gwangju, Korea.
2004‘Double Structure’, video sound installation, Gallery Jungmiso, Seoul, Korea.
2003 ‘Rupture’, video installation, Gallery Atinus, Seoul, Korea.
2000 ‘Mask’, video sound installation, Arco International Art Fair, Spain.
2000‘Caos’, video performance, Litz Carlton Hotel Grand Hall, Seoul, Korea.
1998 ‘TIME CUBE’,’ video installation, Galerie Les filles du calvaire, Paris, France.
1996 ‘Trace du temps’, video installation, Galerie Bernanos, Paris, France.
196‘Coma’, video performance & choreography, Theatre Confluences, Paris, France.
1995 ‘Histoire d’un homme’, video performance, Atelier Artsenal, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
1994 ‘Reflexion, light, water’, installation projection video, Galerie Immotep, Paris, France.
1994 ‘Sur la terre’, sur l’eau, sur l’arbre’, installation environnement, Winchester ArtCenter, Winchester, U.K.
Achievements
- Selected for BWAC Recycle 2019 Juried Exhibition, BWAC, U.S.A..
2017 Resident Artist of the Eunam Museum of Art
- Selected for 12 Inches of Sin International Juried Art Exhibition, Sin City Gallery
2010 Metamorphosis (Solar Eclipse), International Competition for Asian Arts Theatre, Hub City of Asian Culture Project, Asia Culture Center
1999-2001. National Game Promotion Center, Fellowship for VR Project
- One of 6 Finalists of Crédac (Contemporary Art Center of Ivry), Ivry (Paris), France
1997-1999. Scholarship and Resident Artist in The Cité internationale des arts in Paris, Samsung Foundation of Culture, Seoul, Korea
- One of 9 Finalists of Prix Whanki, Seoul, Korea
- Prix Mixte Media pour Coma, Beaumarchais-SACD Association, Paris, France.
- Grand Prix, Salon de Grigny, France