Installation view of 《Double Retina》 (Kumho Museum of Art, 2023) © Jeong Young Ho

Artist Jeong Young Ho explores, through the medium of photography, how contemporary mechanical devices influence the ways in which we understand and perceive the world. Focusing on the gap between the electronic world of experience mediated through screens and the world of direct experience perceived through the eyes, the artist attempts to reveal the relationship and balance between these two realms by overlapping them in this solo exhibition 《Double Retina》.


Installation view of 《Double Retina》 (Kumho Museum of Art, 2023) © Jeong Young Ho

In the exhibition space, black-and-white film photographs taken directly by the artist are juxtaposed with color photographs of scenes viewed through smartphone screens. This contrast presents information perceived through the body alongside information perceived through mechanical devices that substitute for bodily functions. The materiality and tactile qualities unique to black-and-white photography—qualities that cannot be reduced to digital form—continuously call attention to the apparatus within which photography is embedded.

In particular, the layered works, in which color photographs of social events displayed on smartphone screens and captured at close range are overlaid with black-and-white photographs taken by the artist at the actual sites of those events, reveal the disparity between two modes of perceiving a single event.

References