Jaiyoung Cho, Anachrony, 2015, Wood, hinges, and adhesive paper, Dimensions variable © Jaiyoung Cho

Jaiyoung Cho raises questions about the structures and principles underlying our systems of everyday perception, as well as their relationship to broader social structures, through sculpture and installation. She understands the binary values, prescribed social roles, and fixed relational frameworks embedded in everyday life not as inherent or inevitable, but as constructs derived from a language-based system of perception.

Through her work, Cho seeks to reveal what remains undefined beneath these established orders, values, and relationships. In her Kumho Young Artist solo exhibition 《Don't Know》, the artist presents six installation works that create gaps and intervals within the certainty implied by "knowing," rendering visible the ambiguous and indeterminate spaces that lie between certainty and uncertainty.


Jaiyoung Cho, Sound & Silence, 2015, Paper cutting, 29 x 21 cm © Jaiyoung Cho

The first gallery features the large-scale installation Anachrony, which symbolizes ambiguity and indeterminacy. The title, "Anachrony," is a literary term coined by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette (1930– ), referring to narrative structures in literature and film in which the chronological order of events is disrupted.

As visitors navigate a labyrinth constructed from wooden fences, they encounter a series of interventions placed throughout the maze. For example, texts about art inscribed on small spherical objects scattered across the floor are continually recombined according to the viewer's path through the labyrinth. This shifting arrangement places viewers at an ambiguous crossroads where they must choose how to interpret the meaning of art.

The second gallery presents two sculptural reliefs from the ‘Monster’ series, whose geometric planes proliferate through a process reminiscent of cellular division. Composed of forms in which parts of an original object have been removed and replaced by newly added sections, these reliefs neither preserve nor completely abandon their initial configurations.

Existing along an ambiguous boundary, they challenge the notion of originality by functioning as hollow covers devoid of intrinsic essence, much like cardboard packaging. Furthermore, because these repeated geometric forms belong to the domain of numbers rather than language, they evade hierarchical systems of classification and instead suggest a condition in which all objects of perception become equivalent.

Elsewhere, Sound & Silence, composed of stacked wooden letter cutouts, reflects on the power of language as a medium and our relationship to it, while Dear onlooker, featuring two balance weights held at the same angle, appears to embody neutrality but ultimately reveals the dual nature of human beings, whose apparent impartiality often amounts to passive spectatorship.

In this exhibition, Cho further develops her longstanding inquiry into structures of perception, a subject she has pursued since her studies in the Netherlands around 2013. The artist suggests that what we commonly accept as self-evident is never absolute, but rather relational, and that between such relationships exist countless possibilities and ambiguous territories that cannot be fully articulated through language.

In 《Don't Know》, she expands upon these concerns through a broader range of materials and formal strategies than in her previous work, encouraging viewers to recognize and question both the limitations of incomplete perceptual systems and the innumerable unseen realms that lie beyond them.

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