Ayoung Jo paints with light rather than with images. In her ongoing series Still Life, three layers of myeongju, a traditional Korean silk, are positioned at different depths within a single frame, with oil paint applied irregularly to the middle layer. As daylight passes through, the image shifts in depth and intensity with the hour, the weather and the viewer’s position. What appears to be a still image is never entirely still.
The series began with Na bi chi da (2020), a title suggesting the act of letting something show through. In Not Friendly for Copy (2022), shown with a film recording a single day of changing light across the work, Jo takes this to the limits of reproduction: an image may be copied, but the particular conditions of light and time in which it is seen cannot.
Works
Works, 2020 to 2026: three works on layered myeongju silk from Still Life, one of them shown in two settings, and the installation Achsenzeit.
Selected records
- Education
- Diplôme de Stylisme Design de Mode, Studio Berçot, Paris (2010)
- Solo exhibitions
- Still Life: Somatic Field after the Human, Gallery Dalston, Tokyo (2026); Na bi chi da, Mansion Nine, Bangbae, Seoul (2020)
- Group exhibitions and fairs
- BLANC X Daedongyeojido, with BLUECANVAS, Kliz Gallery, Seoul (2025); Connected Space, two-person exhibition, Seoul (2025); Artspace X, Seoul (2024); Focus Art Fair, New York (2024); Artist Open Call Winners, Tart Gallery, London (2023); 100 K-Women Art Fair, Galerie 89, Paris (2023); Focus Art Fair, Louvre, Paris (2022); SEEA 2021, Seoul Arts Center (2021)
- Awards
- Special Prize, 1st Korean Women Artists Painting Competition (2023); Award Winner, International Contemporary Art Competition, Seoul (2020)
- Links
- Instagram @bi_chi_da
- Enquiries
- For enquiries about the artist and their work, please contact KVAA: woori@kvaauk.org
Current exhibition
(mean)while
A group exhibition of four Korean artists, presented by KVAA and curated by Woori Ko. Fourteen works are shown in the exhibition at St Marylebone Art Space, London. Exhibition page