Departing From The Flat World: Jong Oh’s Sixth Solo Exhibition At Marc Straus Gallery
“The world is flat” is perhaps humans’ most primitive sense of physical surroundings. It was also a cosmological conclusion drawn from honest bodily perception, because the land beneath our feet is indeed still and level, and the universe unfolds as an infinitely extending plane. This perceptual honesty is where Jong Oh begins.
The World Is Flat is Jong Oh’s sixth solo exhibition at Marc Straus Gallery in Tribeca. The space is restrained and luminous: white walls and light gray floor converge into a bright tone, flattening the boundary between vertical and horizontal, surface and ground. Most works were created on-site, a process closer to a cosmological act, like “Bereshit,” meaning “in the beginning.” A single line articulates the flat world and extends it towards infinity and possibility.
Oh’s three light sculptures illuminate the exhibition and establish a spatial rhythm. Dante’s Dilemma(2026) anchors the center of the long wall: two slender LED light pipes hang from the ceiling to near-floor, acting as the vertical axis and quietly heightening balance and tension. Linear in extension yet terminating in a gentle curve, it demonstrates an aesthetic of restraint and delicacy. The lines graze the floor without touching it, soft shadows trailing beneath, where time accumulates slowly… Gradually, they flatten surroundings and clarify it, much like a line in a sketch calibrates existence and defines dimension. The presence is quiet and exact, like the centre of a flat world; everything seems to depart from here before the rest begins. When light and line coalesce, softness and sharpness, illumination and shadow coexist, creating concentration and inviting us to meditate, to breathe within the interval of line, light, and emptiness.
Oh configures his world through the lines, curves, and straights, intertwining into fluid geometric form. Victoria and Edward VIIIth (2026) areminimal in appearance but structurally complex, their presence barely detectable, suspended in space like drawings hardly materialized. Upon nearing, faint lines pull subtle relationships into focus, moving from line to object, void to volume, imperceptible to visible. Material specificity emerges, challenging the perception of flatness.
If flatness is where he departs, folding is where the journey continues. Northeast (2026) and Folding Drawing (triple dot) #1(2024) sit in proximity. Northeast, two oblique parallel lines are inlaid within a shallow rectangular frame, departing from opposite corners, dividing the interior into a central rhomboid flanked by two slender right triangles. The resulting symmetry is precise and rigorous, holding stillness of flatness and latent spatial depth. Folding Drawing (triple dot) #1 takes this logic further. A semicircle and a rectangle integrate, the semicircle partially repeating itself: one lies flush against the wall, the other pivots ninety degrees outward, folding into space. The dialectic of flatness and folding activates the space: something that opens, closes, recedes, and reappears. Flatness functions as spatial thinking, where shadow, angle, movement, and sequence alter the experience of forms.
Kristian Vistrup Madsen observed that Oh’s work deemphasizes the “material aspects”, yet his practice is not the terminus of Lucy Lippard’s “dematerialisation.” Instead, Oh travels backward, tentatively guiding our attention toward “re-materialisation.” Beyond flatness, he rediscovers the “material” and reintroduces material presence. Van Wyck and Brooklyn Heights(2026) are where weight begins to insist, signaling his shift toward a more emphatically sculptural language. Small marble becomes the basic unit, wooden rods serve as axes around which strings coil and curve, returning to their point of departure. Through this journey, a spatial route emerges with direction and quiet gravity, until it becomes the sculpture itself—material reaffirms its existence simply and authentically. Oh’s earlier works emphasize linearity and near-invisibility, but these pieces invite us to feel the weight of materiality, texture, and volume. Space remains his primary medium, while paper works translate sculptural thinking and continuously test space. Here, Re-materialisation becomes a journey of rediscovery, where a line has its own weight.
Flatness is capacious; it can accommodate everything and hold everything in potential. Through space, light, time, material, and gravity, Oh opens an improvised yet precise dialogue with the world. Improvisation is the most direct and honest response to the given moment and place: what the line weighs, the fold opens, and the material confirms. A flat world is where everything begins, and perhaps where everything returns.
Sungah Serena Choo, “Bending Moment: Jong Oh, Negotiating with Space,” in A Pause on the Arc (Seoul: DOOSAN Gallery, 2021), 49–58.
Kristian Vistrup Madsen, “Travelling Light: On the Contents of Jong Oh’s Backpack,” Recessed Space (2022), https://recessed.space/00010-Travelling-light.
