Bundo Gallery is pleased to present new and recent works in the fields of mixed media, photography, video, object-art and installation by the Austrian sculptor and media artist Richard Jochum. The exhibition will be his first solo show in a Korean gallery, bringing together installations previously unseen. Despite his rather succinct, post-minimalist and post-conceptual approach, Jochum’s work is often emotionally charged and bears a significant sense of humor either in its aesthetic form or chosen subject. Over the past six months Jochum has been working on a new piece - “Twenty Angry Dogs” - for the upcoming exhibition, a video and sound installation with ten people barking like angry dogs from single monitors and loudspeakers put up in a circle for the audience to walk into. Bundo Gallery will show a number of Jochum’s key works and installations as well as a photographic series called “PaperSeries” in a collaboration with the Bong San Center at two different venues with a joint starting date of March 2, 2010.
Richard Jochum has been working as a visiting scholar and artist-in-residence at Columbia University in New York since 2004. He has been exhibiting extensively and internationally with shows, group exhibitions and screenings around the world, such as in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Africa, as well as frequently showing net-based art online. In Europe he is best known from a traveling exhibition called dis-positiv, for which he chose to display art critics, curators and art historians as living exhibits behind plexi glass instead of regular art work. By physically changing the discourse, the project has challenged the audience to look at some of the less obvious ways in which art is shaped. The project has served as a role model for artists and curators alike and has attracted the interest of numerous art institutions and colleges in Europe and the U.S. while being shown in a number of venues between 2000 and 2003.
Since then Jochum has produced a variety of new media works with a focus on artist books, object art, photography and installation. With a natural inclination to brevity, he has made short videos and digital art become his frequent format, often crossing the limits of one medium and hereby expanding the limits of another. The series “IndexFinger#1-3” for example, also part of the exhibit in Korea, shows three video portraits of the artist re-enacting well-known illustrations and paintings from pop culture and art history. The portraits were individually displayed on LCD panels imitating the style of still photography. "Mama", another short video and sound installation included in the presentation, shows a man crying out for his mother. The video is put on a loop, yet the sound is connected to a motion sensor, thus only audible for visitors as they pass by. The installation captivates by provoking very personal childhood memories; however, hearing an adult man performing the role of a boy makes the performance slightly uncanny; similar to "Halt", in which somebody is actually doing, what we keep warning ourselves of: sitting on a tree and cutting onself off the branch by appying the saw to the wrong side.
Jochum’s works are often embedded in local communities and include a large number of participants such as the land art project “Sisyphus on Vacation” in which he persuaded 20 people to help him carry 350 kg of painted stones uphill in order to put to rest at the top of a mountain. As a sequel he performed another Greek legend, Atlas, in a series of photographs and videos in which he has turned a head stand on a mountain top upside down, thus becoming Atlas, the bearer of the world. Crossing different media has become a trademark for an artist whose proliferate practice comprises a broad spectrum of artistic approaches, including public art projects such as a flip book installation with 30 light boxes inside of a railroad tunnel in the Austrian Alps for the passengers to stare at while riding the train.
Following his own statement, Richard Jochum strives to find “new images for the time we live in. For the conditions and issues we deal with: existentially, politically, physically, and globally”. On those terms, the production of images cannot ever come to an end. In his quest for images that speak to us today he shows a particular interest in engaging with his audience; either by making participation fundamental to the process of its outcome, or in his role as an instigator of discussion and debate. Rather than understanding art to be the sole proprietor of the fabrication of beautiful images, beauty becomes a precondition of life that surrounds us at any given moment. His so-called “PaperSeries” - visually appealing high-quality prints of first wrinkled, then unfolded paper - shows that an exhibition can be a tool to expand our minds by reconciliating our awareness and senses with an everyday-aesthetic which we may not have not been noticing enough yet.
Exhibition at Bundo Art Gallery: March 2 – March 18, 2010
Exhibition at Bong San Center: March 2 – March 14, 2010
More information can be found at:
http://richardjochum.net
http://bundogallery.blogspot.com
http://bundoart.com
