Inside and Outside – Yongshin Cho
2021 Solo Exhibition
November 1 – November 27, 2021
The Riverside Gallery will be having a special exhibition from November 1 to 27, which will be a solo exhibition of the video artist Yongshin Cho, titled Inside and Outside. It is hoped that the content of the work as intended by the artist will make encounter with the audience through this exhibition. This exhibition consists of video art installations, which explore bodies and the expressions of human beings in heterogeneous environments. In the darkened space of the exhibition hall, the images of ten male and female bodies appear along the walls with the presence of whispering sounds. Numerous hands of strangers repeatedly appear and disappear, moving in waves over the bodies and faces.
Video Installation Touch & Contact 2021
The expression-less figures in the videos contain their nervousness and embarrassment about the movement of strange hands and, at the same time, suppress their curiosity and expectations regarding the possibility of communication with a new world. They are ordinary people who volunteered to be participants in these works of art. The artist used cameras to observe the individuals’ responses to the unfamiliar environment.
Video Installation Hands in Clock 2021
These are part of the larger works by the artist focusing on the tensions and conflicts between the social structures and individuals. Although individuals create social structures, they ironically try to break free from them. History records this resistance against and adaptation to the social structures. Rather than being merely observers of the figures, the audience can become the figures themselves. The title of the exhibition, “Inside and Outside,” symbolically points to these relations.
The bodies in Cho’s video arts are well known for their exquisite aesthetics of balanced light and darkness. The images of the bodies moving within the boundaries between natural colors and restrained black and white tones evoke mysterious emotions among the audience. The images, which are like moving paintings in the darkness, cause mixed feelings in the audience as they enter the dark and unfamiliar space of the exhibition hall.
Yongshin Cho is a renowned video artist who acquired a reputation in France while he was working there as a young person. Cho has worked in Paris, Seoul, and New York after studying plastic arts at Université Paris-VIII. His works have been shown around the world in countries.
Together with the works of Nam June Paik and Bill Viola, his work “Beautiful Is a Man Who Resists” was shown at the 15th International Video and Multimedia Art Festival Videoformes at Clermont-Ferrand. He gave the opening performance and exhibited his multi-screen video installations at the festival. He was supported by Samsung Cultural Foundation, and was invited to show his works at Pompidou Centre, Gentilly International Video Festival (France), International Video & Technology Art Festival (France), Gwangju Biennal (Korea), ARCO International Art Fair (Spain), FIAC Art Fair (France), Doryun Contemporary Museum of Art (China), and other galleries. He now focuses on developing virtual reality x-box story.