Roh Choong-hyun (b. 1970) captures and engages with familiar scenes from our everyday lives, translating them onto canvas through his unique painterly language. He begins by photographing landscapes he observes directly from where he stands, then reinterprets these images through the medium of painting.

His paintings, while portraying landscapes with a subdued and unassuming tone, often stir fragments of our memories or evoke a profound emotional resonance.

When Roh began his artistic journey, Korean painting was dominated by two major movements: the abstract “Dansaekhwa” and socially conscious “Minjung Art”. Amid this landscape, Roh emerged as a new-generation figurative artist, approaching reality with a perspective distinct from that of the previous generation.

In the early 2000s, during the era when digital cameras became widely accessible, Roh started building his unique painterly world using photography as a key element. His work begins with carrying a digital camera to revisit and reevaluate the places he frequents. The photographs he captures serve as tools to evoke the memories and emotions he experienced while observing those landscapes, which he then reconstructs on canvas.

Since 2005, Roh Choong Hyun has been working on his Prosaic Landscape series, set against the backdrop of Han River Civic Park, a place he frequented for many years. The title, Prosaic Landscape (살풍경), carries the dictionary definition of “a highly solitary and quiet landscape.” Unlike the structured, dense, and rigid cityscapes, Han River Park stands out as a rare open, quiet, and unoccupied space within the bustling metropolis.

At the time, the artist was experiencing a sense of psychological alienation, which drew his attention to the barren and monotonous landscapes within this desolate setting. While his paintings are grounded in emotional experiences of the scenery, they are rendered with a subdued and detached attitude, maintaining a restrained emotional distance.

The artificial and natural landscapes of Han River Park undergo painterly reinterpretation in Roh’s work, transforming them into places that feel both familiar and strange. For instance, The Rainy Season (2008), which depicts a rainy Yeouido swimming pool in Han River Park, conveys impressions of barrenness and desolation beyond the visible scene.

The artist explained that unlike a photograph, this work captures the location with “imprecise perspective, applying paint as thinly as possible to evoke the impression of murky, muddy water.” Through the blurred textures in the painting, viewers can sense the emotional and visual responses the artist experienced at the site. Additionally, his paintings invite the viewers to reflect on the spatial atmosphere of each scene, intertwined with the passage of time inherent to the depicted location.

Around 2011, Roh began observing the seasonal changes along the Han River. Revisiting the same spots he had observed for nearly a decade, he saw these landscapes anew, seeking to reimagine them and evoke the emotions tied to their transformation.

While the Prosaic Landscape series captures the "in-between" spaces of the city, the Zari series, which Roh began in 2006, shifts its focus to the landscapes of zoos—spaces that exist "outside" the urban fabric. By painting empty animal enclosures devoid of their usual inhabitants, the artist portrays spaces with ambiguous identities—vacant "places" where traces of modernity seem to linger.

By removing the animals, the protagonists of the zoo stage, Roh shifts focus to the space itself, drawing attention to the stage-like setting. These enclosures, designed for the animals to play in, are often adorned with makeshift elements such as clumsy wooden pillars and artificial natural objects, creating a contrived and awkward landscape. The artificiality and irony of these scenes, as observed by Roh, are depicted in his paintings as sealed, vacuum-like spaces, devoid of any airflow or movement, further intensifying their eerie stillness.

The artist sees the stage elements of the zoo as mirroring the precarious and fragile structures of the world we live in. He described this space as “a landscape similar to the stage of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, where fragments of human reality are displayed—a space that mixes the tragedy and comedy of human life, a paradoxical space that evokes an appropriate sense of melancholy.”

Objects in the zoo, such as hula hoops, tires, and water bottles, placed independently of the animals, resemble the solitary tree in Waiting for Godot—a symbol that offers no help to the characters. Through these paradoxical landscapes, where space and objects are disjointed, the artist invites us to reflect on our own reality.

The Closed-door Room series (2009), presented in a solo exhibition at Project Space Sarubia, captures the spatial qualities of historical moments from the military dictatorship era in Korea. This work not only reflects the artist’s personal reflections on the socio-political history of modern Korea but also addresses contemporary societal issues.

The artist repeatedly engaged in a process of "drawing and erasing" to record through painting the places associated with the practices of secretive, authoritarian rule—such as prisons, correctional facilities, Yongsan disaster site, Memorial of Jong Chul PARK, the old secret service building, and etc.

Additionally, in the Sarubia exhibition space, the artist experimentally installed two cement walls at the center, creating a direct encounter between the spatial, historical, and thematic elements of the painting. This heightened the emphasis on the theme of ‘secrete rooms-closed door room’ within the work.

Similar to his earlier series, Closed-door Room is based on photographs the artist took at the actual locations he visited. However, it also incorporates images found on the internet, representing situations of secret room—oppression, discipline, surveillance, death, and violence—, which were crucial in conveying the hidden, repressive aspects of power.

The artist addresses the dark realities of history marked by politics, torture, violence, and death, while reflecting on the social context of the present day. He believes that societal phenomena such as the impossibility of communication, closed-off spaces, and unilateralism have transformed into invisible "secret rooms" that now permeate various aspects of society. Through Closed-door Room, he uncovers signs that hint at or exemplify these situations taking place in our society today.

By capturing these situations and the emotions they evoke through texture, the artist hints at the broader crisis of a reality that is increasingly becoming sealed off, extending beyond the political realm to encompass the everyday struggles of contemporary life.

Roh Choong Hyun has consistently translated his emotional experiences and the issues of reality into his own unique visual language. Rather than focusing on distant or extraordinary landscapes, he finds connection in the everyday, ordinary places such as Han River Park, zoos, and Hongjecheon Stream, where he observes and resonates with the human aspects of these environments. His paintings carry a dry and tranquil atmosphere, yet they also convey a warm, humanistic perspective and a sense of warmth toward the landscapes of life.

”What I attempt to express in my paintings is not the place per se, but it is approaching the emotions I have had while staying there. The emotions contain a certain warmth.” (Roh Choong Hyun, Artist Note)

Roh Choong Hyun completed his BA and MFA degrees in Painting at Hongik University. His solo presentation has opened at several recognized galleries such as Willing N Dealing (2020), Perigee Gallery (2017), Gallery Soso (2015) and Kukje Gallery (2013). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at multiple leading art establishments including Gallery Soso (2021), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2021), Nook Gallery (2020), Buk-Seoul Museum of Art (2018), Seoul Museum of Art – South Seoul (2018) and Chapter II (2017). He was selected by the Mongin Art Center Residency Program in 2010.

References

• 노충현, Roh Choong Hyun (Artist Website)
  
• 국제갤러리, 살풍경 (Kukje Gallery, Prosaic Landscape)
• 국립현대미술관, 노충현 | 장마 | 2008 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Roh Choong Hyun | The Rainy Season | 2008)
• 페리지갤러리, 자리 (Perigee Gallery, Zari)
• 아트 인 컬처, 이추영: 그 곳의 빈 자리, 2006년 6월호
• 프로젝트 스페이스 사루비아, 실밀실 (Project Space Sarubia, Closed-door Room)
• 챕터투, 노충현 (Chapter II, Roh Choong Hyun)