Curatorial Statement

Timeless Wonder

The Container of Color 

If one were to ask what makes painting painting, Yujeong Cho would likely begin by locating the answer in a single concept: “color.” For her, color is both the most fundamental condition that constitutes painting and the minimal unit of stimulus that activates the desire for painterly inquiry. Wooden or aluminum supports, canvas made of fabric, sizing glue, paint composed of pigment and medium, dots and lines, perspective and flatness, even the presence of the painter and the time she spends—under these conditions color functions as the central mechanism through which Yujeong Cho binds the pictorial surface into a structure, converts a continuous world into divisible units, and allows painting to operate as a kind of container. Through this process of collecting and arranging color, we witness a persistent speculation: how far painting can be extended using only its most basic condition.

Yujeong Cho is fascinated by complete systems of color. The names of colors serve simultaneously as parts of her titles, as classificatory systems, and as the very categories she seeks to explore. The colors addressed in this exhibition 《Eternal Wonder》—red, blue, yellow, orange, green, pink, and black—correspond to the systems of modern color theory established between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. They are directly related to Isaac Newton’s seven-color spectrum, while also intersecting with Goethe’s perceptual theory of color, Johannes Itten’s twelve-part color wheel, and the chromatic systems constructed by the pigment and dye industries after the nineteenth century. In other words, Cho does not begin from an unclassifiable subjective world, but from historically constructed and systematized frameworks of color grounded in science, perception, and industry.

Meanwhile, the numerical quantities listed in her titles—such as 2,200, 915, or 750—refer to the number of distinct colors she has sourced and employed in order to represent a single conceptual color as a large aggregate within a completed system. These numbers mark both the maximum quantity of pigments she can currently obtain or produce for painting and the limit values through which she tests the boundaries permitted by the system. The invisible premise of what is “permitted” permeates her practice. What she selects are all the colors that exist in the world, verified through theories and arguments accumulated from their origins to the present. As a child, she used to question whether the twelve colored pencils given to her were sufficient, which led to a curiosity about how far the range of colors could be expanded. This was, in essence, an inquiry about how external systems that operate from outside the subject can both define and constrains the scope of one’s actions.  As will be revisited later, this perspective becomes one of the grounds upon which her work operates not merely as a listing of preferences, but as painting: a definition of painting as a medium that carries new possibilities.

Her current works, represented by the series Color Chart and Cabinet, materialize a desire for color that has emerged after the continuous reduction of painterly concerns. At first glance, her canvases resemble uniform all-over paintings; yet upon closer inspection, a multiplicity of images and forms appears, divided into rectangular units and filled with branching variations of color. This formal strategy allows her to present and arrange dozens of pigments—collectively referred to as red or blue—as individual entities. To achieve this, she primarily purchases tube paints or raw pigments from brands such as Kremer, Schmincke, Natural Pigments, Roberson & Co., and Gail Traditional Colors, or mixes pigments with binders. These brands emphasize the material origins of color, documenting detailed sources and compositions of pigments. Such conscious selection of materials reflects an intention to position each color, within a schematic or archival system, as an independent entity with its own material genealogy.

One important point to note is that her paintings have thus far been executed entirely in watercolor. This choice stems from her aim to align specific colors with the objects or symbolic forms they evoke through association. For instance, her work (2026) references Vincent van Gogh’s (1887), but prioritizes the color yellow itself rather than the impasto texture characteristic of oil paint. In order to distance the work from material imitation, the smooth properties of watercolor become more suitable. Consequently, the colors she applies are far removed from conventional painterly skills such as representation or harmonious composition. Rather than using color effectively in a technical or compositional sense, she focuses on delivering the inherent qualities of color. This, again, reflects how her work passes through theoretical and historical investigations embedded in color systems prior to painterly technique.

The Color Chart series, which she has developed over several years, emphasizes her engagement with color through a grid-based diagram. Layers of dozens of paints are applied in horizontal and vertical strokes, producing overlapping chromatic fields within each rectangular unit. This is not an attempt at harmony or aesthetic refinement traditionally attributed to painterly skill, but an effort to push the range of colors within a system to its utmost limits. Consider <2200 Oranges> (2026): fifty red pigments and forty-four yellow pigments overlap to generate 2,200 distinct shades of orange. The canvas includes various breeds of goldfish she once kept, depicted in different poses—serving as hypothetical signs constructed through forms representative of orange. Here, the mixed oranges define and reveal themselves directly. In this sense, the superimposition of color extends beyond experimental results to address the ontological condition of color within conceptual and systematic frameworks.

The Cabinet series presents these concerns through a narrative mode employing allegory. Each work constructs a contemporary Wunderkammer by arranging minerals, dyes, pigments, historical records, and natural objects according to their scale. Works such as <Red Cabinet> (2024) and <Blue Cabinet> (2026) reference Domenico Remps’s (1689), adapting the opened cabinet structure into the format of the canvas. Within a single cabinet, objects directly or indirectly associated with red or blue—whether symbolic or materially foundational as pigments—are assembled. The interior space, divided into upper and lower sections and framed by one or two open doors, contains a wide array of natural and artificial objects: plants, animals, minerals, drawings on paper, paint palettes, wallpaper, glass vessels. According to the perspective of the cabinet, the upper section contains raw materials of natural pigments and grid-based color charts, while the lower section presents artificial pigment charts and taxidermied animals painted in those colors. Notably, animals such as birds and chameleons that traverse the cabinet reflect historical practices in nineteenth-century natural history, where color names were derived from natural specimens.

Her cabinet functions both as a material-cultural collection and as a persistent investigation into the origins of color. While it recalls a time when color was a rare material and expensive pigments signified hierarchy, her interest does not remain at the level of nostalgia. When selecting paints, she prioritizes those labeled “genuine” rather than modern substitutes labeled “hue,” favoring natural pigments whose names and compositions correspond. For example, cochineal pigment is used to depict cochineal insects, and ultramarine is used for lapis lazuli. In another work, <750 Combinations of Blue and Brown> (2026), based on X-ray images of a painting by Francisco Goya, Cho does not attempt to reproduce an absolute, self-contained black. Instead, she employs the traditional technique of layering blue and brown to recreate black as a relative effect formed through material differences, prior to its conceptual consolidation as a singular color. This alignment between origin and result moves beyond mere representation toward a demonstration of color’s material foundations.

What, then, do these meticulous arrangements ultimately seek? The totality of color, perhaps, or the construction of a complete system? Yet in the process of answering, excess intervenes. The accumulation of hundreds or thousands of chromatic grids, produced through the layering of dozens of colors, forms a densely packed declaration that seems to attempt to contain all existing colors. However, perception has its limits. The range of colors we can perceive remains restricted, both historically and in the present. Nor can we predict how or when existing systems might expand. Thus, despite its desire for a complete inventory of color, Cho’s color charts and cabinets must also be understood as provisional totals—pushed to the limits of what is possible in the present moment. In this way, her pictorial surface becomes a vessel, a repository, a model of the world, within which only a portion of that world can be stored.

Ultimately, what matters to Cho extends beyond color itself. Her painting is less an attempt to complete a catalogue of color than an archival device that juxtaposes the temporal layers through which color has been accumulated and classified. The systematic frameworks of modern color theory, the material history of the pigment industry, naming conventions rooted in natural objects, and the range of colors currently available all coexist within the grids and cabinets. The pictorial surface, in this sense, does not function as a rigid storage system, but as a “heterotopia” in which different temporalities and values overlap within a single space. Supported by this structure, her painting becomes a container: a framework of thought that renders continuous color into discrete, calculable units, enabling comparison and juxtaposition.

 - Jinju Kim (Independent Curator)

Cho Yujeong

fineart0523@naver.com ｜ @jyjjyjjuj

Education

2023 M.F.A. Printmaking, Seoul National University, Seoul

2017 B.F.A. Painting, Seoul National University, Seoul

Solo Exhibitions

2026 Timeless Wonder, OCI Museum of Art, Seoul

2025 Color & Grid, 0gonggan, Seoul

2023 Marble · Marbling · Marbled, Art Space Qualia, Seoul

2022 Veiling after Tracing, Art Space Qualia, Seoul

2021 Pattern-Painting, Art Space Qualia, Seoul

Group Exhibitions

2025 Attitudes towards Contemporary Printmedia, PlaceMAK3, Seoul

2022 Artists' Recipes, Seoripul Gallery, Seoul

2021 The Novosibirsk International Triennial of Contemporary Graphic Arts, Novosibirsk State Art Museum, Novosibirsk, Russia

Awards / Honors

2025 Selected as 2026 OCI YOUNG CREATIVES, OCI Museum of Art, Seoul