Jong Oh has been creating work that involves staying in the space where his pieces will be installed, observing and feeling the architectural elements and invisible sensations of that place, and visualizing these through constructive forms. Oh connotatively describes this as the resonance that the space possesses, and his work primarily involves creating the shape of this resonance by connecting thin wires and small objects. The installations he creates, like the "ROOM DRAWING" and "LINE SCULPTURE" series, are formed as if drawing or sculpting in space.

While these are composed of thin, delicate, and small geometric points, lines, and planes, the spaces created by their connections are filled with an invisible force. In this way, he perceives space, discovers something, imposes order through arrangement, and conveys this to us as a certain situation. The work installed by Oh becomes realized and continuous through our viewing eyes, allowing us to finally see something and simultaneously feel both the work and the space.

Thus, the physical objects and empty spaces that compose his work function as sensory mediums in themselves. As a result, in his work, we feel forces like gravity that we usually don't perceive, along with the volume and density inherent in three-dimensional forms. This exhibition "white" proceeds in a slightly different aspect as an extension of his previous work. This statement will be a journey to naturally discover that difference in the process of closely examining the artwork.

Upon entering the exhibition space, you encounter a rectangular work composed of translucent white fabric, straight lines, and curved white light in a dark space. To explain in more detail, wires were first tightly fixed horizontally and vertically at the top of the exhibition space for installation. White fabric is then installed in the air on these wires on four sides, forming a basic rectangular structure. Various sizes of fabric are installed like curtains, either spread wide or folded with creases, with these diverse fabrics doubly wrapping the four sides. Between these, white light is composed of straight lines and curves of various sizes, installed at different heights.

As evident from the exhibition title, Oh chose white, the most basic and characteristic element of the exhibition space, as the material for his work in this exhibition. White is an empty space not yet filled with anything. In art, a white canvas or paper is a space for painting, and a white cube is provided as a basic space for exhibitions. However, white is not actually empty, though we conceptually consider it so. While the conceptual white walls of the exhibition space have an opaque quality as a fixed element, the white fabric Oh presents has a translucency that faintly reveals what's behind it.

The white surface made of fabric appears brighter or relatively darker due to the white light between them. White reveals differences as it moves away from the light source, depending on the range of light.

This is partly because the white light created by Oh varies in brightness itself, but also due to the effect where the light appears fully bright, completely invisible, or even split into multiple parts depending on the layering of the fabric. In this way, white creates diverse textures between fabric and fabric, and between fabric and wall, through the combination of fabric and light that Oh has created.

In this exhibition, light plays a role in emphasizing whiteness while simultaneously revealing spaces that appear visually empty. If Oh's previous works made us perceive empty spaces as filled spaces in our minds by connecting them, this work replaces that with tangible light that can be visually seen. The light fills the spaces divided by fabric, illuminates the fabric boundaries again, and also shines on the exhibition space beyond those boundaries.

Although to varying degrees, there is no place untouched by light in the exhibition space and on the audience. Therefore, we absorb the light with our bodies along with seeing it with our eyes. This creates cracks in the existing space through his work, making something exist there, and continuously creates new cracks in a way that exists within the separated, being wholly one thing yet separating into individual entities.

Now, let's move on to the topic of light. When objects emit their strongest heat, the light appears white. Additionally, white light is a type of light that shows objects as they are, feeling as if it has no color. The white light he uses is a presence that is most full yet feels almost non-existent.

This doesn't slide across space through visual movement, but spreads from the light quietly placed in that space. So, when viewed from a specific point outside the work, the light makes the space appear as if filled with dense fog, and when seen from the open parts of the fabric, it is perceived as light itself. Thus, light is not fixed, but shows a changing appearance that reaches a peak, disperses again, and reaches another peak according to the audience's movement and the resulting position of their gaze.

In a way, the white fabric and light installed in his work might be giving themselves opportunities to connect or interfere with each other, newly setting their own directions. Therefore, while his previous works mainly revealed tight tension due to the causal connections of their components, this work adds to that a feeling of relaxed tension, as if lightly floating.

Let's return to the wire, the foundation that makes his work possible. In his work, the fabric and light floating slightly in the air couldn't be in that state without the solid frame of wire. If we can imagine this wire as an existence like the ground we stand on, we can think of the fabric and light as standing tall based on it. When we look at the space again from this perspective, we recognize that the relationships between the artwork placed in the exhibition space, the exhibition space itself, and the objects used in the artwork form a subtle parallelism and contrast. The wire that forms the foundation of the work is horizontal to the floor.

The white fabrics are placed parallel to the square walls of the space, and unlike the flat and hard walls, the fabric shows soft and wrinkled contours. Also, the opaque walls contrast with the translucent fabric. The tightly horizontal wire contrasts with the looseness of the thin white fabric falling vertically, and the white light reveals the differences between darkness and brightness intertwined, while the spreading light contrasts with the linear form of the lamp. This maximizes the properties of an object while newly inducing senses that we haven't detected.

We are already in a space full of white light and are looking at another white space, experiencing a repeating circular structure where we see the space of the exhibition hall outside again within the space created by the artwork. Generally, when looking at separated individual objects, it's difficult to imagine any connection just by themselves, but Oh's installation, based on balance, harmony, and his method of adjusting their differences, makes this possible.

There also remains the possibility of infinite recombination that we haven't yet seen. This work seems to have sculpturally unraveled a flow where closely overlapped causality and loosely unwound causality intersect and circulate repeatedly, utilizing the audience's stopping and movement as components of the artwork.

Let's examine this further. The basic components of the artwork installation are simple and appear in different forms, but each fulfills its role faithfully. His work, which appears as a result of these individual elements being connected causally, creates not a fantastical or mysterious space, but a real space that exists in reality. Additionally, the similarities and differences of different objects such as lines, planes, and light are simultaneously revealed. A naturally three-dimensional depth is created due to the varying degrees of influence that these thin and light elements have on each other. And what makes this possible is ultimately the viewer's gaze.

In the exhibition space, 'my' eyes, the white fabric, and the light are connected in a causal relationship. However, the audience doesn't view this from a single position but continuously moves. Therefore, what we see is only a temporary state. As we approach the work while viewing the whole from a distance, our field of vision gradually narrows. When we move sideways, open spaces that were not visible before appear. Entering there, we see the space between fabrics and the exposed white light placed there, or when looking outside, another scene unfolds.

In this way, his white fabric and light continue to move through concealment and revelation according to our gaze, creating multiple causalities. This variety of sensations shows the artist's attitude of moving beyond the completeness of Oh's previous works, fully entrusting the free rhythm and resonance of the space to the audience.

Shin Seung Oh works as the director of Perigee Gallery, which is operated as a non-profit by KH Vatec, a leading company in advanced technology. Perigee Gallery hosts solo exhibitions of renowned Korean artists in their 40s through the series 〈Perigee Artist〉, supports exhibitions of emerging artists through 〈Perigee Unfold〉, and fosters collaborations between curators and artists via open calls in the 〈Perigee Team Project〉. Additionally, the gallery leads efforts to popularize contemporary art through its educational program for art enthusiasts, 〈Perigee Art School〉.