10 Jul 2008 — 9 Aug 2008
Jo Seub
Who wants to live forever

Jo Seub, who has taken the motives of his photographs from historical, social incidents occurring during the process of Korea’s modernization, his third solo exhibition is presented. Unlike his previous exhibitions that showed the reproduction of historical incidents, in this show, Jo focuses primarily on human’s inherent desires. He accentuates on power and truth, eternal life, and our blind confidence in capital and science, posing questions about the insanity and horror derived from these desires as well as those of the artist himself who also has fallen victim to such a structure. While his previous work featured general absurdity, concrete historical specificity, and incidents in contemporary society, this exhibition comments on the true nature of humans, departing from the specific situation in Korea.

In the horrors we feel are represented as a dead person who stays with us and oppresses our lives and spirit. The spirit of the dead in his work is a symbol for human desire, absolute power, violence, capital, belief, and love and he always exists within it as a victim. Some of his works appropriate the images from previous masterpieces, showing that such spirit’s attachment and madness hovers in the present that we are living in now. The artist confirms by way of work from the Middle Ages that the desire, horror, and madness of humans today are not different from the fundamental problems that artists in the past dealt with and thus incorporates images in reality into magical elements.

In whose composition was appropriated from Peter Rubens’ The Deposition we have probably once viewed, the artist alludes to the gohosts seeking other lights or the truth. Cho questions that some images we feel familiar with through paintings hover around us as other ghosts. The exhibition to bring together his 14 artworks and to be held in three years after 2005 will provide an opportunity to objectively view our present lives.
  
Who wants to live forever 01
Digital LightJet Print
200 x 153 cm
2008