Jo Choon Man: Utopia

CHAPTER II & CHAPTER II YARD  2021. 6. 10 - 7. 24

Elsewhere, Utopia of the Industry

- Young June Lee (Mechanical Engineering Critic)

Although we all belong to the industrial world, we do not pay considerable attention to how the industry works. We are not familiar with the plastic manufacturing procedures: refining crude oil into naphtha: heat- ing and disassembling naphtha to produce ethylene and propylene: the chemical structures become funda- mentals of the widely used commodity plastic such as PE, PP, PVC and PET. Without the knowledge of it, we only furiously blame plastic for environmental pollution. We also do not know that the production of pure iron involves a smelting reduction phase to turn the ore into high-purity iron by removing oxygen from the iron oxide, yet we can still casually kick the desk legs made of it. In this context, the best we can do about the industry is to appreciate the industrial aesthetics. The aesthetics have a wide range embracing compli- cated-systemized factory facilities, shapes and textures of components molded by machines or even an odd scent of plastics. As a mere consumer of the industry, each of us is neither able nor willing to understand and analyze its mechanism in the first place; it seems enough to be a civilized individual if we can appreciate the aesthetics of the industry. In the past, reading Goethe, listening to Mozart or not dropping cigarette butts on the street qualified one for being regarded as a well-educated person, whereas it demands people to have an acknowledgement of the aesthetics in the current situation. This can be found in the tendency that many people decide to purchase the MacBooks since their case has a captivating sleek texture of extremely fine aluminum.

The industrial aesthetics of what Choon Man Jo creates through a camera is certainly authentic. He has produced numerous photographs of the heaviest and the most intricate industrial equipment seen surreal to the extent that its operating principles are too enigmatic to grasp. How can we call the photographs artworks? The only way for photography to be included in fine art is the intervention of interpretation. In comparison with other photographers who crop and reassemble images, Jo provides straight photographs without any additional manipulation except adjusting the aperture and focus of a camera. Nevertheless, the reason why we think that his practice contains such an interpretation is his unique perspective abstracting the figurative aspects from the facilities and sceneries. His vision transforms the industry into an immensely complex, dense and uncanny dimension consisting of formative elements. The people who actually work in the field give short shrift to these spectacular scenes of the industry. In this respect, Choon Man Jo’s practice conveys the landscapes even the people who pass the sites on a daily basis do not manage to catch. Thus, his photographs indicate the other side of the industry―in other words, the realm of utopia. In the realm, there is no longer excessive intensity of the industry or the pain caused by catastrophes. Only Gestalt―density, formality, light and shadow of the industrial facilities―remains there.

The title of the exhibition, Utopia, stands for not only the physical location of the artist who has taken pictures at a long distance from the actual sites but the world he creates where is ironically unseen by the people who practically spend the most of time with noise, smell and the risk of injuries within the stomach of the whale, the industry.

As a former welding technician at the Ulsan industrial complex, Choon Man Jo had been fascinated by photography, not his main career in the beginning; but later he entered Kyungil University to study photography in his 40’s. Since graduation, he was concentrating on taking pictures of mainly demolition areas around the complex and the underprivileged for a while. Henceforth, his interest naturally grew towards the industry field where he had been a hard-working employee in his early days. His solo exhibitions were featured at several establishments including Le CRI des Lumières in France (2020), GoEun Museum of Photography (2019) and Ulsan Culture and Art Center (2014) since his first solo exhibition was presented at the Goto Gallery in Daegu (2002). Also, he has photographed the Völklingen Ironworks in Germany, one of the World Heritage sites declared by UNESCO. Jo has attended multiple group exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2018, 2015), Ilmin Museum of Art (2014), Culture Station Seoul 284 (2013), the KEPCO Art Center Gallery (2009) including being invited by Seoul Museum of Art for the exhibition, Document: The Map of Photograph Archive (2004).