MARC STRAUS (New York) is pleased to announce Jong Oh’s solo installation at Blk 22 Lock Road, 01-35 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444. Oh will present a new site-specific installation, made in response to the gallery space. The installation will be available for public viewing from 23 – 27 Jan 2019.

Jong Oh (South Korea) is a contemporary conceptual sculptor whose Minimal site-specific installations have been receiving critical attention from curators and collectors alike for their innovative role in redefining what is possible for Minimal art today.

Jong Oh (b. 1981) creates site-specific ephemeral sculptures that frame empty space, using only minimal materials of string, Plexiglas, and thin chains. Precise yet intuitive, Oh conflates Western Minimalism with Eastern Mono-ha sensibilities to demonstrate how space can be reconsidered with sublime consideration. His works are visual haikus, each only a few lines long, but addressing the universal.

This is the first time Oh’s work will be presented in Singapore, and the artist will be present on site at Gillman Barracks for the installation. In practice, Oh’s process is responsive and intuitive, working as a conversation between man and architecture, light and form. Perhaps it was the fishing nets in his father’s fishing business he encountered in childhood, or the vast openness of sea and sky during fishing expeditions that informs his approach to space and forms. His ability to shape space is at moments subtle and ephemeral, but entirely decisive.

Point extends to line, and lines connects to eventually create a geometric shape that float in the air or off the wall. Moving around the structures is a disorienting experience: are the faces of the shapes solid? How do they float? In a sense, Oh is “drawing” three-dimensional shapes in space.

In continuation of a new practice from his 2018 show in SPIRAL, Tokyo, Oh will use small found rocks from the streets of Singapore into his installations: an act of serendipity. Small found rocks and crystals are integrated into his work-they appear to punctuate lines or defy gravity by balancing impossibly on the thinnest string.

Currently living and working in New York, Oh earned his BFA from Hongik University in Seoul and MFA from the School of Visual Art in New York. Since then, Oh has participated in numerous solo shows worldwide, including his recent solo exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art, SPIRAL, Tokyo, Japan, and in a two-artist exhibition at the deCordova Sculpture Museum in Massachusetts entitled Sculpting with Air.

Opening Reception: Jan 23rd 4pm

Venue: Blk 22 Lock Road 01-35, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444

When: 23 - 27 Jan 2019,

By: Gillman Barracks