Exhibition view of Heinkuhn Oh’s solo exhibition “Left Face” at Art Sonje Center, Seoul. (December 8, 2022 – January 29, 2023). Photo by Aproject Company.Art Sonje Center presents Heinkuhn Oh’s solo exhibition “Left Face” on view through January 29, 2023.
Heinkuhn Oh’s solo exhibition “Left Face” presents one of the artist’s series, Portraying Anxiety, which he has been working on since 2006.
Korea is considered a collectivistic society where people have close ties with fellow members of the group. This can be seen everywhere in Korean society. Everyone has their own individuality, but some images come to mind when we think of certain groups, such as ajumma (a Korean word for a married or middle-aged woman), high school girls, and soldiers. Oh captures such a specific group in Korean society as a portrait. It is intended to express the common emotional insecurities felt by the majority of people. Portrait of Anxiety is a collection of works that express the anxiety of contemporary Koreans.
Left Face is a series of photographs depicting individuals the artist met near his studio located in Itaewon. The artist captures facial expressions and gestures typical of unspecified young people. Oh has captured people with distinct characteristics in groups, but in this series, the only distinguishing characteristic is that all of the figures are young people. In this exhibition, the artist tried to encompass people who cannot be categorized according to specific keywords defined by society. This is intended to reveal the anxiety of Koreans living in the contemporary era, not a specific group.
The Art Sonje Center has prepared the project space “Art Sonje File” to examine the past and present of the Art Sonje Center through its collections and previous programs. This project coincides with “Left Face” entitled “Art Sonje File: Heinkuhn Oh,” which presents part of Oh’s Ajumma series. The series was exhibited at the museum in 1999, attracting considerable attention in Korea as it reflected the social position of middle-aged Korean women who existed only behind their husbands and children. The series reveals the sense of isolation and insecurity these groups of women felt.
Through the medium of photography, Heinkuhn Oh (b. 1963) captures the characteristics of Koreans formed during the development of Korean society. Oh has held various solo exhibitions that reveal groups of Korean women at institutions, including Art Sonje Center in 1999, Ilmin Museum of Art in 2003, and Kukje Gallery in 2008. In his Gwangju Story series, he also portrayed the citizen performers and crowds at the filming site to examine discipline and violence.
