Seoungho Cho, NEON.2-2, four channel video installation, 2010.
Lyrical and visually striking, the video works of Korean artist Seoungho Cho are distinguished by a unique confluence of complex image processing and sound collage. Resonating with a highly metaphorical sensibility, Cho’s single-channel tapes and installations are formalist, almost painterly explorations of subjectivity and the subconscious. The urban landscapes that Cho often depicts move with a continuous fluidity, shifting from dreamlike abstractions of light to fleeting reflections of the city. Figures, cars, and trains are mirrored and diffused through one another, silhouetted with a haunting anonymity that is echoed in the poetic texts and soundscapes that accompany each piece. These often tense meditations focus on the nature and cost of isolation and loneliness while integrating into a culture, landscape and language other than one’s own.
Seoungho Cho was born in 1959 in Pusan, South Korea. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Graphic Arts from Hong-Ik University, Korea, and an M.A. in video art from New York University. In 1998 he received a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship and in 2003 he received a Jerome Foundation grant. He has received the “Grand Prize” at the 27th Annual Black Maria Film and Video Festival as well as the International Award for Video Art from ZKM.
Cho’s one-person exhibitions have included The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; Samsung LeeUm Museum of Modern Art, Korea; the Pusan Metropolitan Museum of Art, Korea; Montevideo, Amsterdam; and the Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto.
His work has been shown in numerous international festivals and exhibitions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris: National Museum, Madrid; Pandaemonium ’98, Lux Centre, London; Centro d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Mori art Museum, Tokyo; the Festival Nouveau Cinema, Nouveaux Medias, Montreal, Canada; the Valencia Biennial, Spain; the Kwangju Biennial, Korea; the British Film Institute, London; the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida; the Robert Flaherty Film Seminars; Artists Space, New York; the International Film Festival Rotterdam; Oberhausen International Short Film Festival; Edinburgh International Film Festival; and the New York Video Festival, Lincoln Center, New York. Cho’s tapes have been broadcast nationally and internationally.
His video installations have been selected for the permanent collection at such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Busan Metropolitan Museum of Art, Korea and Samsung LeeUm Museum of Modern Art, Korea
The work “LAND GRAB” (12-channel video installation for 12 62″ monitors) was commissioned by the Samsung Electronic Company in Korea has been permanently installed since 2005 in the lobby of their Digital Media Center in Soo Won, Korea. One of his video-installation proposals was selected for installation in 2007 for the Los Angeles International Airports’ Tom Bradley Terminal. The production of the video installation (12 Channels for 59 of 46″ monitors) was installed since May 2010.
Cho’s tapes have been distributed through Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Montevideo, Amsterdam. He lives in New York.