Areum Woo, Art Critic
Humor, satire, compassion, penance, and asceticism. These are the words Jungho Oak has been hearing all the time. Why does humor become penance, and how does asceticism make satire? How does compassion permeate the circulation of all this? These words, which are interchangeable in the previous sentences, have given their bodies to each other and created Oak’s work. The keyword that runs through these words is his ‘body’.
Oak has captured the world by putting himself in the picture. At first, it was a fluttering, finger-pointing gesture. In his early works, such as Photo Time series (2001–2005), in which he was photographed side-by-side in front of buildings with his head covered by either a spiky church spire or the round dome of the National Assembly building, and Ha Ha Ha (2003), in which he holds a sign that says 'Ha Ha Ha' in front of a house in a new town, he collects scenes and depicts various aspects of urban bluff, inserting an easy symbol. He looked cheerful and seemed to have no doubt at the time when he held solo shows in two consecutive years.
In his third solo show, The Holy Landscapes (2011), which was held after a long gap, he abandoned many of the symbols outside and focused on his own body. He – who started learning yoga with a twisted mind against 'well-being' – poses next to a rainbow in a rainbow-colored bodysuit, but then he dresses up in a formal suit and performs various yoga poses seriously on a wetland. Does a difficult time open the eyes to the holiness that lies in funny things? He, who had captured symbols of the world with his indicating gesture, now began to lay out his own body. It seems it was then when compassion began to dwell in his work.
Recently, he made a short film called Freak Show 2020 (2019). The film is a prequel to his previous work, showing how his persona ended up having a half-split body. The story is horribly realistic, and fantastical at the same time. The story begins at the construction site for the magician's performance stage. Precarious workers mobilized for the construction admire the magician on stage. His fingers get cut off in return for having lost his mind. The magician conjures up a worker's fingers, but when the worker wants to be on the stage, he suggests breaking his body in two. The worker tolerates the pain of cutting, but the spotlight on the stage is only focused on the magician. The worker's two broken bodies depend on each other and go out to the riverside to sit side by side. A rainbow comes out next to the two-not-one, creating an ambiguous mise-en-scène as if it were a fantasy or the past.
Featuring the magician's stage, the short film has a frame story. The stage of magic and play confuses the division of identities as both the space of the activities of characters and of all kinds of illusions. In this mess, the stage of the freak show – formerly a device of violence – becomes an active staging area. After a drag performance at the beginning of the film, the stage is handed over to the magician. The stage space in the movie is a world of recognizable and complete people. In the play, the worker does not hide his desire to join the world on stage. But the logic of reality, which also works in the fantasy world, is even more destructive. The worker leaves his own stage and comes out to the riverside with his half-broken body. Instead of entering the promised world of the completed, he chooses to stay in the squalor of reality.
Humor, satire, compassion, penance, and asceticism. These are the words Jungho Oak has been hearing all the time. Why does humor become penance, and how does asceticism make satire? How does compassion permeate the circulation of all this? These words, which are interchangeable in the previous sentences, have given their bodies to each other and created Oak’s work. The keyword that runs through these words is his ‘body’.
Oak has captured the world by putting himself in the picture. At first, it was a fluttering, finger-pointing gesture. In his early works, such as Photo Time series (2001–2005), in which he was photographed side-by-side in front of buildings with his head covered by either a spiky church spire or the round dome of the National Assembly building, and Ha Ha Ha (2003), in which he holds a sign that says 'Ha Ha Ha' in front of a house in a new town, he collects scenes and depicts various aspects of urban bluff, inserting an easy symbol. He looked cheerful and seemed to have no doubt at the time when he held solo shows in two consecutive years.
In his third solo show, The Holy Landscapes (2011), which was held after a long gap, he abandoned many of the symbols outside and focused on his own body. He – who started learning yoga with a twisted mind against 'well-being' – poses next to a rainbow in a rainbow-colored bodysuit, but then he dresses up in a formal suit and performs various yoga poses seriously on a wetland. Does a difficult time open the eyes to the holiness that lies in funny things? He, who had captured symbols of the world with his indicating gesture, now began to lay out his own body. It seems it was then when compassion began to dwell in his work.
This scene is the present moment where Oak reached. He has presented himself to the world as a strange thing. From Jungho Oak, who wore a spire hat and took pictures with numerous church roofs in Seoul, to Jungho Oak, who left the world in two, the chronicles of his work are filled with numerous strange Jungho Oaks. He does not wear camouflage but a rainbow costume, making it loud and clear that he exists and feels uncomfortable in this world that he doesn't always agree with. In this immunological world, one can feel a sense of unity by removing the space of the Others, he becomes the Other by himself and constantly moves to create a strange sensation. So he constantly uses his body. By using his body he passes the paths of humor, satire, compassion, penance, and asceticism. Looking at his work makes my knees hurt.