Installation view © CR Collective

CR Collective holds Jong Oh’s solo exhibition 《Double Sided》 from June 23 to July 30, 2022. The artist presents “room drawing” as geometrical material that becomes a line as well as a plane as the extensions his previous works, such as Line Sculpture and Folding Drawing.

There is a white paper board that meets a structure formed by connecting thin wooden bars. As making a paper airplane, a piece of paper folds into several lines, and the divided plane forms each part of a paper airplane. The space is folded and unfolded several times along the drawing lines, and planes become visible and invisible by wooden bars or overlapping papers.

Here, a bar, which has a dictionary definition of “a straight-line object with a certain cross-sectional area,” becomes a line that embraces the plane. The paper, which becomes a thin line when viewed from the side, becomes a plane that looks like a line. Depending on the direction of view, materials can be lines or planes, and this forms a visible and invisible structure.

By looking at the space divided and folded into lines or planes drawn by Oh, one can see a plane that clearly exists yet is not entirely visible because it is blocked from your vision. This newly created space by the artist opens up variable expandability by shedding light on an invisible space.

Can an intact and perfect space exist? In order to create a perfect space without gaps, cracks and flaws, the lines should be built up from the floor to support each other so that they do not bend or fall apart with opposing planes. Like a pendulum that pulls a thread tightly by its weight with gravity at the end of a thread suspended in the air, the paper and the stick support each other to create a solid form against invisible forces, such as gravity or moisture.

Oh’s room drawing, which begins with a space that he carefully observed and experienced, exists in a shape in which the entire place becomes invisible. It is to build a flawless space that can be imaginably seen but not completely shown, which is impossible in reality by receiving or defying the help of invisible operational forces.

The cold and sharp tension from the regular geometric shape that highlights the least possible form and meticulous creates balance with the warmth of wood and paper. Jong Oh, who explains that he works like walking a tightrope between the extremes of illusion and physicality, three-dimensional and plane, and improvisation and calculation, adds warmth to the cold and coordinates confrontational objects by drawing invisible things. He juxtaposes a side with another side and gradually reduces the distance between different elements as if they are standing with their backs facing each other.

In Edwin A. Abbott’s novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1984), the narrator “A Square” lives in a two-dimensional world called Flatland where he cannot see himself around his surroundings. Flatland residents can only see a point or long and short lines, which are only the sides of flattened figures.

In 《Double Sided》, viewers will be able to explore the intersectional space where lines become planes and planes become lines, as if Flatlanders who could only see the side of a two-dimensional world go on an expedition of a different dimensional world.

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