JO JAE

Borrowing its title from the gaming term “cooldown,” the series focuses on the interval between an image’s circulation and its return to material form. Drawing from disaster footage, game interfaces, short-form media, signage, and advertising, Jo reconfigures visual fragments on canvas, suspending them from accelerated cycles of consumption and relocating them within a new spatial order. While vivid color and collaged digital elements retain the sharp contours and flat surfaces of screen-based imagery, dense acrylic layers and incisive brushwork restore tactility and material presence. A translucent gel medium fixes these suspended states on the picture plane, rendering “cooldown” as both a temporal condition and a material operation.

Jo received her BFA in Painting from Sungkyunkwan University, MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (London), and finished coursework for a Ph.D. in Sculpture from Seoul National University. Jo Jae has held solo exhibitions at WWNN (Seoul, 2025), Kumho Museum of Art (Seoul, 2023), Interart Channel (Seoul, 2020), and Space 413 (Seoul, 2018). Her group exhibitions include Korean Cultural Centre UK (London, 2025), BB&M (Seoul, 2025), APOproject (Seoul, 2025), Art Center White Block (Paju, 2024), Newspring Project (Seoul, 2024), TGC (Seoul, 2024), Jiwooheon (Seoul, 2024), WWNN (Seoul, 2023), G Gallery (Seoul, 2023), Wooseok Gallery, Seoul National University (Seoul, 2022), Stour Space (London, 2019), Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop (London, 2018), K Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, 2017), The Cello Factory (London, 2017), Safehouse 2 (London, 2016), and Hockney Gallery (London, 2015). Jo was selected as a 20th Kumho Young Artist and a Next-generation Scholar at Seoul National University(Seoul, 2023). Jo participated in Radical Residency II at Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop (London, 2018) and was also a finalist for The Hopper Prize (U.S., 2018). Her work is held in the collection of the Art Bank, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.

Text courtesy BB&M.