Juheon Cho

Juheon Cho (b. Seoul, South Korea) is a contemporary Korean painter whose practice centres on traditional Korean deep colour painting (진채화). Through this form of art, Cho explores themes such as the commodification of personal narrative, the possibility of self-restoration through drawing, diaspora and the value of artisanal labour.

Cho reflects on her personal experiences as an outsider living in Berlin. Her drawing project ‘@project.dear.diary’ consists of 140 drawings that capture daily sensations of nature, people and the world. The vivid and fluid quality of the shapes, textures and colours within the drawings involve an active engagement with her foreign self-identity and artistic identity. Cho emphasises her role as an active participant in her own environment and unveils pathways for self-reconstruction and progression. Her works are further transformed in the ‘Mind-scape’ paintings, where drawings lose their narrative. A process of fragmentation reduces the drawings to elements of colour, shape and texture. The significance of their original narratives is erased; as a result cycles of personal narratives become commodified. In ‘@a.work.towards.incomplete’, the power of incompleteness creates a narrative where the artistic process itself becomes a testament to continual involvement. The deliberate state of incompletion, achieved by transitory sketch lines and intentionally unpainted segments, invites the audience to be aware of the artist's labour beyond the artwork.

The artist currently lives and works in Berlin. Juheon Cho studied at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul (2010-11), from which she obtained two separate degrees in Korean traditional painting/ Fine Art and Printmaking. The artist then studied her masters in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London (2015). The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe as well as South Korea, and was part of the 2022 BBA Artist Prize group exhibition in Berlin.