9/12/2004
Koo Jeong-A
Portikus, Frankfurt
Wednesday. The walls of Portikus are plastered with over 700 photographs that Koo Jeong-A (born 1967 in Seoul) has taken since 1992. Some of these images document her earlier installation works while the others allow small glimpses into her intimate private sphere.
Wednesday
The walls of Portikus are plastered with over 700 photographs that Koo Jeong-A (born 1967 in Seoul) has taken since 1992. Some of these images document her earlier installation works while the others allow small glimpses into her intimate private sphere. The entirety of a given situation rarely pushes itself into focus: a dog’s snout, the edge of a table, a dust-bunny, house gables and everyday objects – simple, unpretentious materials that appear momentarily in a cone of light. They are often nothing more than remnants of everyday life that she either amasses together or removes separately from their original networks so that the presence of a discrete, sheltered and fragmented system emerges. In her photographs and installations alike, the things that Koo Jeong-A chooses to isolate and bring into focus are so remarkably unaffected and subtle that they could easily have been overlooked before they disappeared again completely.
But precisely because of this approximation to a world of details, which she approaches with an intensive and meticulous consideration, she achieves an acute zone of calm. A zone, in which ordinary elements are arranged in extraordinary ways, time seems to be organized differently, and an altered dynamic between the objects is established. Of course, we see these things that we recognize (or thought we recognized), but the unusualness of this newly ordered constellation intensifies this fragile balance and sometimes renders them unrecognizable within their cosseted environment. They appear to possess an inner dimension that seems more likely to belong in a world of dreams.
The works from Koo Jeong-A are like protocols, unfinished passages of text, jotted notes, that all present themselves with a new clarity. By exchanging pre-existing scale relationships, they don’t stake out any borders – they are signposts to the inaccessible, sometimes almost invisible, miniature landscapes that rectify our mechanized expectations.
Invitation to Press Talk on Friday, December 10, 2004, 11:00 am
Opening on Friday, December 10, 2004, 8:00 pm
opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Wednesday 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
closed on Mondays
also closed on December 24/31, 2004 and January 1, 2005
PORTIKUS im Leinwandhaus
Weckmarkt 17
60311 Frankfurt am Main