ART

Cho Giseok wants to grow up to be an Art Director

The Nostalgia dreams of a great artist

By William Choi

 

“When I was young, I wanted to be an art director.” It’s a funny statement and even funnier when you think that it comes from South Korean avant-garde photographer, Cho Giseok. I mean what kid dreams of becoming an art director? Born in 1992, he studied Graphic design at Kookmin University; however, he found the practice unsatisfying and, dropped out at the age of 20 to try to become an art director. As he learned more about the field, he started to build skills in many different fields such as set design and photography. “I wanted to create my own images, and I wanted to work through all the processes.”

Surprisingly, Giseok is now more than an art director, he’s a famous artist who’s still on the rise. Along with multiple commercial collaborations and a few exhibitions in other countries, he has established his own fashion brand, Kushkohc, in 2016. The brand utilizes Cho’s distinctive style as an artist and his distinctive way of putting things together as an art director. Through the course of 2019 to 2020, he worked on a project called “Flower Study,” in which he tried to depict the essence of flowers by recreating them with models, objects, and different kinds of materials.

These works were included in his first major exhibition, “Coexistence” at Fotografiska in New York in August of 2020. “Fantasy” was his next exhibition at Fondazione Sozzani in Milan, and Gangnam-Gu in Seoul in 2022. He also held minor solo exhibitions in Fotografiska in Stockholm, and Kusikohc’s SS22 collection “Right to Fail”. As his fame has grown through the internet and exhibitions all over the world, he has started collaborating with major brands, such as Vogue Korea, Kinfolk, Nike, Adidas, Gentle Monster, and more.

I’ve always been inspired by everything and everyone around me that I could relate myself to. I get inspired by all other artists—literally, I look at all artworks, from classic to modern. These days, I am into Surrealism.

As wild as Giseok’s art and design are, I would claim that the most powerful element in his work is the feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia normally leads to sentimentality, but in Giseok’s art, it leads to much wilder and stranger emotions. Even though he’s becoming an international star, his work keeps reminding me of Korean culture’s embrace of and honoring of the past. It’s like experiencing a case of cultural deja vu. Even when I see it for the first time, it throws me back into a dream world where I’ve been before. But don’t trust me, just take a look at these photographs.

An interesting relationship with nature

The above photograph is from the “Coexistence” exhibition. As strange as it is, I know who this boy is and where he is from. The extremely saturated red in the background accentuates the gaze of the topless young man, staring straight ahead. It feels as if he’s looking into my soul. And most importantly, the butterflies landing on the young man’s body take me back to my childhood when I chased butterflies and imagined them landing on me. The mysteriousness and surrealness of his style might make him seem like the hippest artist in the world, but what I see is a place where nature and people are one and at peace.

As if someone is blooming

Giseok takes this effect even further in his “Flower Study”. Here, he recreates the flower on the left in human form. He uses natural colors, actually skin colors to recreate the presence of an actual flower. His use of body parts is startling. An eye stares at us from in between the petals making it feel as if the flower is trying to tell us something. I would say that this photo might show the moment when the flower sees the world for the first time. The best part of Giseok’s vision is that the boy’s eye is in the gap between the petals as it starts to bloom. Again, he forces us to see ourselves as part of the cycle of nature where every bloom reminds us of all the blooms before it, a never-ending cycle of nostalgic reflection.

I think I might want to be a flower

The above photograph is from his exhibition, “Fantasy”. It depicts a girl sticking her face between two branches of a flower. At first glance, the girl seems so sad. The way she holds her head suggests that she would like to be the flower, but knows she can’t. Even though her white jacket mirrors the flowerpot, a game attempt to become the flower, we can feel her disappointment that she has not achieved her goal. This is one of Giseok’s great strengths: he makes us reflect on both our aspirations and limitations.

But Cho does not necessarily use the human body all the time. In the “Flower” photos he shows us people yearning to be closer to nature, but in one of his works “Cover Story” from For Dream Magazine, he shows us objects striving to be human.

Ode to a broken vase

At first glance, the photo seems to be pieces of a broken flower pot. But if you look closely, the broken pieces of Chinese blue and white porcelain, Quinhwa, form a human face. Look closely and you see eyes, nose, and mouth. Unlike Cho’s other work, we can’t forget the flowers that surround this shattered face/vase. They seem to promise some kind of hope, some kind of rebirth as if a child were bursting out into the adult world. Of course, there’s going to be some damage, but the damage is necessary to grow. It’s not so much nostalgia, but a confrontation with nostalgia and absolutely brilliant.

Quite an album cover

Another example of Giseok’s work is the album cover of my favorite Korean R&B artist, Crush. Back then, I didn’t know about Giseok, but from the moment I saw the cover, I just stared at it wondering what this was about, not the music, but the album cover. In the extremely saturated blue space, there is a mysterious cube. The cube is filled with junk, broken pieces of plastic, and random unidentifiable objects, that feel like pure chaotic emotion. The use of blue gives the chaos a somber quality as if we could somehow distance ourselves from the violent emotion it evokes. And that distance feels nostalgic, just nostalgic in the most complex of ways. Let’s call it a nostalgia scared of its own memories.

Most of his artworks contain the elements of nostalgia and nature. His works declare that he’s not just a commercial artist, but an artist who draws people’s attention by conveying nostalgia and the meaning of nature in an avant-garde style. He is capable of conveying the message and emotions in the art form, which makes the commercial product more meaningful to customers and audiences. His vision is strange, but it all works out in the end. By channeling aspects of nostalgia and nature into both commercial and avant-garde forms, Giseok is becoming an artist of major vision and brilliance.

©William Choi and the CCA Arts Review