Terminal Forms - Ed Oh
Observing objects becomes the focal activity in contemporary patience, where I find the most mysterious things are terribly simple.
There is often, in my work, a play between painting and sculpture. Together they speak volumes of a similar sound. A sound of sacred chanting, industrial, techno, and material inspirations takes form in the mess of abstraction. Objects at a construction site, by the lake, at the airport, or in an apartment can contain forms that speak an inspired world. Still life paintings have always engaged with the sustenance of form because forms are cyclically changing in the spells of time. Turning the act of looking into a thing/object, I tend to paint an object through observation because it is a key to everything that happened before and after it. Drawing is the core instrument of play between painting and sculpture. The picture plane is akin to painting and drawing, yet the sculptural considerations interest me a great deal outside of these frames. I approach objecthood as a bricoleur and readymade gestures frame objects as the subjects of time and space. Toying with our systems of value and contemplating the dysfunctional, the world as it is provides the breadth of wonder. The terms of a readymade object's labor within a given network of exchange are at play "besides, with, against painting, and yet remain art." (Busta)
Ed Oh | 2019
Artist Biography
Since early childhood, Ed Oh (b.1992, Los Angeles) learned to paint and draw. The first painting he describes seeing was “an oil painting of a portrait of my great-grandfather. It was hung high up, close to the ceiling in the living room.” Ed Oh’s work is heavily influenced by ancestral worship, still life, and bricolage obj d’art. He has always been inspired by Los Angeles, where he grew up, and the restaurant his family has been operating in Koreatown since 1985. Ed Oh graduated with a BA at the University of California, Riverside and got his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has shown at the Modern Art Museum of Shanghai, Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Elmhurst Art Museum, IL, Galleri Golsa, Oslo, and Western Exhibitions, Chicago.