Life is a Stage

The fantastic and imaginative art of the young South Korean artist Jun Ho Cho confronts the viewer with an incredible directness. His works, which are deep engaged in the image of the human being, are now presented for the second time in the Gallery Michael Nolte. The fascination of his art is the high artistic individuality. With his completely new way of depiction Jun Ho Cho has developed a unique pictorial language and pictorial aesthetic. In doing so, his works unfold a magical universe, which emanates a mythical aura – enigmatical as well as inexplicable.

The persons often look like as if they were masqueraded. Their faces are like masks, painted white like in the Korean theater. Life appears as a stage on which the figures play the role Cho intended them to be. This ›role‹ is inspired by the world of legends and fairy tales or mythologies and religions, but also by modern journals and South Korean Manhwas. But in almost the same manner important for the role is the character of the artist and his own cultural imagination. Like puppets directed Cho his figures and let them »play the life I am going through in my painting« [Jun Ho Cho]. This is the complex construct from which the artist creates his unique and fantastic figures – figures whose connect a fantasy world with the people of our modern society, their fears, concerns and questions of identity. The depicted persons become metaphors of the predetermination of all human life and in order that they reflect the destiny of human existence.