Kai Oh

Kai Oh

 

▷ You primarily work with collected digital images and photographs. What does this process entail for you?

For me, collecting photographs is a way of collecting experiences. I believe that experiences accumulate not only when I try something new, but also when I step outside the boundaries of the familiar and look at everyday life from a different perspective. This exhibition continues my ‘Half Sticky’ series, which draws on photographs of pansies commonly found in urban landscaping. Pansies are both vibrant and resilient, yet they often go unnoticed in the cityscape—a contradiction that I found particularly compelling.

 

▷ How do ordinary photographs by smartphones become works of art in your practice?

As I walk through the city, I collect fragments of nature using my smartphone, which I then transform and rearrange in response to the spatial context of the exhibition. These digital images are printed and combined with newly conceived supports to create three-dimensional photo-installations. In this process, the photograph no longer remains a mere record of something, but instead intervenes in the space as a strange and sculptural fragment. My work not only presents the image itself, but also puts on display the modes of presentation and the material conditions of the medium.

 

Half Sticky, Wood, pigment print, aluminum frame, print, 240×1440 cm, 2023 

 

 

▷ What are you hoping to convey through your work?

I’m especially drawn to ambiguity and to distinctions that lie within ‘subtle margins’.  For instance, I often wonder how a tree in the city differs from one in a national park, or where the boundary lies between life and non-life. I was born and raised in Seoul, and later lived in Germany and the United States. Through these experiences, I came to realize that each culture values different things. I also found it fascinating how a change in language can shift the way we think. I hope viewers will use my photographs as a starting point—to trace, imagine, and uncover the various layers of context embedded within them

 

▷ What do you hope viewers consider when encountering your work?

I think of my two-dimensional works on the wall as portals—gateways that briefly open into other worlds. I hope viewers will take a moment to reflect on what it means for these flat images to temporarily occupy space within an exhibition. Ultimately, I hope my work can serve as a prompt to consider that art may exist not only as a visible, material outcome, but also as a way of life—something intangible, yet no less present.

 

Half Sticky, wood, pigment print, aluminum frame, print, 240×1440 cm, 2023