Cho Yong-Ik: The Irreducible I

Head scrambled from too much information overload, endless notifications, and too little sleep? Aching to remember what it feels like to just be… human? This is that kind of show. Spend a minute here, and your pulse slows.

The gallery’s fourth-floor space is already a light-drenched sanctuary. Cho Yong-Ik’s canvases in pulsing blue, yellow, red, and green hum against quiet, grounding works in cream, tan, and raw umber.

Small marks cover every surface, lining up into hypnotic, perfectly imperfect grids. From a distance, they appear so precise you might mistake them for mechanical screenprint. Step closer, and it’s clear a living, breathing hand shaped every single mark, revealing an infinite array of human idiosyncrasies.

To make them, Cho layered diluted paint directly onto canvas, linen, burlap, or paper, then coated it in a contrasting hue and scraped, pressed, or wiped into the top coat, dragging the underlying color to the surface. Some marks are carved with a brush tip. Others are imprints of his thumb. Look for the ones that stretch into fluid gestures resembling fluttering, falling ginkgo leaves.

The relentless repetition quickly turns intimate. You notice the pressure, hesitation, rhythm, breath. Bring your meditation cushion, metaphorically or otherwise. Return until viewing them becomes a ritual.

Cho Yong-Ik (b. Bukcheong, South Hamgyong Province, 1934, d. 2023) was a foundational figure in modern Korean art who spent 60 years refining his singular visual language. After studying figurative painting at Seoul National University, he moved through bold, hard-edged abstraction in the 1960s before landing on his signature process-driven, repetitive mark-making in the 1970s. A celebrated educator who taught for nearly 30 years, Cho represented Korea at the Paris and São Paulo biennials and the India Triennale, then made a triumphant return in the 2010s with his most vibrant color palette yet.