About This Project

Blue Gallery è onorata di presentare una mostra personale di opere nuove e recenti dell’artista coreana Hyun Cho (nata nel 1982 a Seoul, KR). Intitolata Electric Supermoon, la mostra sarà presentata da Quadro Zero alla Blue Gallery dal 9 giugno al 7 luglio 2024.

La prima mostra personale di Hyun Cho a Venezia segna un ritorno in Italia, per l’artista, che ha esposto per la prima volta in Italia allo Spazio Display (Parma, Italia) nel 2018, prima ancora della sua residenza a Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italia) nello stesso anno.

Electric Supermoon includerà installazioni, sculture, pannelli LED e testi. Le opere in mostra esploreranno i temi centrali delle indicazioni culturali nelle iconografie urbane, del linguaggio di uso comune e dei simboli equivoci. I nuovi lavori di Cho sono incentrati sulle iconografie urbane che diventano effimere e ambigue. È come se ci venisse data un’esperienza di qualcosa di reale che in realtà non è presente, e allo stesso tempo di qualcosa di reale che potrebbe non essere possibile. La mostra approfondirà anche l’approccio punk che costituisce la firma di Cho. Il punk è oggi un esempio archetipico del modo in cui una sottocultura può essere mercificata, neutralizzata e incorporata nel mainstream: il punk ispira ancora un’arte ribelle e intrinsecamente politica, sollevando domande sulla centralità dell’estetica quando si tratta di definire un movimento culturale che la trascende.

Hyun Cho ha dichiarato: “Con le parole, mi propongo di creare un nuovo genere d’arte. Mescolo lo stile lirico della musica punk con la sensibilità pop per creare frasi che esprimano la mia esperienza e che servano agli spettatori per allegare la propria. Adotto una caratteristica stilistica dei testi punk rock: brevi, ripetibili e orecchiabili. Sono accattivanti e talvolta perversi per catturare l’attenzione del pubblico, riflettendo sulla messaggistica che incontriamo ogni giorno nel nostro mondo complesso”.

La mostra comprende una serie di tre opere recenti realizzate dall’artista a Seoul, pensate come pezzi con un chiaro riferimento alle lapidi o ai monoliti dell’auto-memoria. Si tratta di “RIP #Blue”, “RIP #Orange” e “Hitchhicker”, tutte collegate da una tonalità fredda e metallica con display a LED e luci che alludono a dichiarazioni illogiche ma definite, creando un’atmosfera giocosa per contemplare l’agentività – il nucleo della capacità umana di esercitare un controllo cosciente sul proprio comportamento. Le luci LED costituiscono una fonte di energia che pulsa come una superluna.

La contestualizzazione delle opere di Cho all’interno della Blue Gallery di Venezia riguarda, nella prospettiva di Quadro Zero, l’interazione che nasce dall’incontro tra contenitore e contenuto nel perimetro di una città così definita dalla propria estetica.

L’approccio ironico e concettuale di Cho strizza l’occhio all’opera di Marcel Duchamp e al movimento Fluxus, alla Pop Art e agli Young British Artists, pur attingendo al suo personale linguaggio artistico e culturale.

About This Project

Blue Gallery is honoured to present a solo show of new and recent works by Korean-born artist Hyun Cho (b. 1982, Seoul, KR). Titled Electric Supermoon, the exhibition will be presented by Quadro Zero at Blue Gallery from 9 June to 8 July 2024.

The first solo exhibition by Hyun Cho in Venice marks a return for the artist, who first exhibited in Italy at Spazio Display (Parma, Italy) in 2018.

Electric Supermoon will include new and recent installations, sculptures, LED panels and texts. The works on view will explore central themes of cultural indications in urban iconographies, common use language and equivocal symbols. Cho’s new artworks centre on urban iconographies becoming ephemeral and ambiguous. It’s as if we’re being given an experience of something real that isn’t actually present, while also experiencing something real that may not be possible. The exhibition will also delve into the punk approach constituting Cho’s signature. Punk is now an archetypal example of the way that a subculture can be commodified, neutralised, and incorporated into the mainstream: punk still inspires rebellious and inherently political art, raising questions about the centrality of aesthetics when it comes to defining a cultural movement that transcends them.

Hyun Cho said: “With words, I aim to create a new genre of art. I mix punk music’s lyrical style with pop sensibility to come up with phrases that express my experience and serve viewers to attach their own. I adopt a stylistic trait of punk rock lyrics: short, repeatable and catchy. They’re appealing and sometimes sexual in nature to capture the audience’s attention, reflecting on the messaging we encounter everyday in our complex world.”

The show comprises a series of three recent works produced by the artist in Seoul, which are thought of as pieces with a clear reference to gravestones or monolith of self-memorial. These include “RIP #Blue”, “RIP #Orange”, and “Hitchhiker all linked by a cold, metallic hue with LED displays and lights hinting at illogical yet defining statements, creating a playful atmosphere to contemplate personal agency through the artist’s words. LED lights build up a source of energy pulsating like a supermoon.

The contextualisation of Cho’s works within Blue Gallery in Venice is, in Quadro Zero’s perspective, is about the interplay that rises from the encounter of the container and the content in the premises of a city so defined by its own aesthetics.

Cho’s ironic and conceptual approach gives a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s ouvre and the Fluxus movement, Pop Art and the Young British Artists, while pulling in her personal cultural artistic language and experience.

The exhibition is curated by Quadro Zero for Blue Gallery, in close collaboration with the artist, and is accompanied by a critical text by Curator Ilaria Sponda.

Note to Editors

Hyun Cho (b. 1982, Seoul, KR) studied Painting at the University of Sydney (2009) and received her MFA from the Parsons School of Design in New York (2012) through a scholarship.

Her interdisciplinary practice uses self-written phrases from American pop culture to question cultural indicators and self-identity within the context of globalisation. Through examining built environment found objects, mainstream commodities, and the construction of self-agency,

her works uncannily comment on the tangled interrelationship between Northeast Asian and Western sociopolitical aspects.

In 2008 she was nominated for the Zelda Stedman Grant, and in 2018 she was invited as artist in residence at the renowned residency at Palazzo Monti, in Brescia (Italy). Since then, she’s been based between Italy and South Korea returning for Viafarini-In-Residence residency in 2020 and 2023.

Cho’s works were exhibited in solo shows at Galleria Ramo (Como, 2019 and 2023); Edicola Radetzky (Milan, 2018); Spazio Display (Parma, 2018); Open Space Baltimore (Baltimore, 2016); Conduits Art (Melbourne, 2013); Fowler Project Space (Brooklyn, 2013).

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Blue Gallery, located between Campo Santa Margherita and the Ponte dei Pugni in Venice, under new management, is committed to promoting artists based solely on artistic appreciation and personal respect, rejecting conventional exhibition practices. The director, Silvio Pasqualini, a Master of Art and painter, aims to create an ideal and real artistic cenacle where artists can express themselves freely. The distinctive blue-gray color of this space inspires feelings of well-being and creativity, as if one were between sky and sea.