Cho Yong-Ik: The Irreducible I

Head scrambled from too much AI, too much work, and too little sleep? Aching for a moment, what it feels like simply to be where you are? This is that kind of show. Bring your meditation cushion, metaphorically or otherwise.

The gallery’s fourth-floor loft is already peaceful and light-filled. Cho Yong-Ik’s paintings in blue, yellow, red, and green hum alongside quieter works in cream, tan, and brown. Spend a minute with them, and your shoulders drop.

Every surface is covered in small marks that line up in perfectly imperfect grids. From a distance, you might mistake them for silkscreens. The repetition is so exact that the hand disappears. Step closer, and the opposite becomes true. A very human hand made every one.

Cho layered diluted paint onto canvas, linen, burlap, or paper, added an oppositely colored layer, then pressed, scraped, or brushed into the surface to reveal the color beneath. Some marks come from a brush tip. Others from his thumb. Still others stretch into long, calligraphic gestures, like falling Ginkgo leaves.

Soon, the repetition turns intimate. You notice pressure, hesitation, rhythm, breath. What first appears uniform proves endlessly particular.

Go in the morning. Go on your lunch break. Go on a Saturday afternoon. Return and make it a practice.

Cho Yong-Ik (1934-2023) was a Korean painter who spent six decades finding his mark. He started with figurative work as a student at Seoul National University and moved into bright, hard-edged abstraction in the 1960s. From the 1970s onward, repetitive, process-driven marks became central. He showed at the Paris and São Paulo biennials and the India Triennale, and taught for almost three decades. After years away from painting, he came back in the 2010s with more color than ever.