Cho Hyo Ri (b. 1992) has developed a painting practice that intersects seemingly opposing elements—reality and virtuality, three-dimensionality and flatness, materiality and illusion—within a single frame, evoking uncanny sensations and imaginative experiences. Her work connects three axes: the illusory virtual space within the painting, the viewer’s physical movement in real space, and the time in which the virtual and the real intersect. Through this, she invites the viewer to imagine movement and spatial depth beyond the stillness of the pictorial surface.

Cho Hyo Ri’s first solo exhibition, 《Your Clock is BEHIND / Your Clock is AHEAD》 (Gallery N/A, 2020), featured works that highlighted her visual and conceptual approach to painting. The title—“Your Clock is BEHIND / Your Clock is AHEAD”—is a common error message that appears in a browser when a computer’s system time is incorrectly set far in the past or future. Inspired by this message, the artist imagines a gaze that floats endlessly between past and future, untethered from the present, and translates this concept into her painterly language.

This phrase encapsulates both Cho Hyo Ri’s process and the resulting works. Reflecting on intersecting layers of time and space, she gathers objects like scattered memories picked up along the way, assembling them into an illusory, simultaneous space through 3D simulations—before translating these constructs onto canvas.
 
In this sense, “Your Clock is BEHIND / Your Clock is AHEAD” embodies several key aspects of her practice: the creation of a relationship between the “front” and “back” of a painting; the arrangement of objects within the canvas that appear to recede and advance, forming a spatial illusion; the way this spatiality is always entangled with temporality; and the use of 3D simulations as a way to project a meticulously constructed, even rigidly forecasted, vision of the future into the final outcome.

Indeed, Cho Hyo Ri’s paintings often contain visual mechanisms that prompt viewers to imagine the passage of time—such as the depiction of moving objects in sequential frames—or encourage physical engagement, as viewers must shift their bodies to perceive the full work, which may extend across the front, sides, and even the back of the canvas.
 
The artist describes her approach as imagining the canvas as a flat screen suspended at the very center of a virtual space within the painting. She builds and paints the surrounding space, envisioning it not as separate from the canvas but as something that can connect to the real, physical world through this surface.

Her paintings also often feature embossed watermarks, which serve as devices to remind the viewer of both the presence of the canvas-as-screen and the materiality of paint. Typically used to protect copyright, watermarks obscure full access to an image, interfering with perception.
 
Belonging to a generation familiar with such visual obstructions, Cho Hyo Ri adopts the disruptive effect of the watermark as a way to deflect the viewer’s gaze—transforming visual illusion into something tactile. 

While Cho Hyo Ri’s first solo exhibition brought together her conceptual reflections on the medium of painting, her second solo exhibition, 《Extended Play》 (Gallery ANOV, 2021), showcased works that focused more on personal, direct experiences and emotional, affective movements.
 
According to the artist, her earlier works were created with a certain distance from her private life, deliberately excluding personal emotions. However, in preparing for her second exhibition, she sought to metaphorically infuse her paintings with the emotions she felt in specific moments of everyday experience.

For instance, I was there (2021), which depicts flattened grass, originated from a photograph the artist took during a walk. At the time, Cho Hyo Ri was going through a mentally difficult period, and during one of her walks, she was struck by a patch of grass that had been pressed down amid a lush field and decided to capture the moment with her camera.
 
One day, overwhelmed by the feeling that she had no choice but to accept the uncontrollable things unfolding around her while standing still in place, she recalled the image of the grass—whether it had collapsed under its own weight after the rain or been pressed down by someone’s footsteps—and painted it onto canvas.

Meanwhile, in the two-person exhibition 《The Seasons》 (2022) held at ThisWeekendRoom with artist Yiji Jeong, Cho Hyo Ri’s recurring concept of layered veils—such as watermarks and digital layers—extended beyond the painterly frame. These elements emerged as tangible presences that permeated the exhibition space, occupying its structure and corners, no longer confined to the surface of the canvas.

For example, Overture (2022) is a work composed of two canvases installed to align with the corner of the exhibition space. The unreal, illusory spatial sense depicted within the painting overlaps with the actual architectural setting, creating a subtle interplay between the real and the virtual. Through the slits between torn paper rendered on the surface, a faint glimpse of an imagined space emerges—inviting viewers to envision an unknown realm that expands infinitely beyond the flat plane.

Cho Hyo Ri’s painterly images originate from the fundamental act of drawing, gradually acquiring their own identity as illusions of imagery. As the watermark—once confined to the flat surface—extends into the exhibition space, and as her paintings evolve into spatial installations, the artist has begun to materialize these visual illusions into three-dimensional forms. By incorporating various materials and objects, Cho transforms the image beyond the canvas, giving it a tangible, sculptural presence.

For example, It’s raining, Mr. Judd (2022) is a sculptural installation made of stainless steel, with droplets made of resin gathered on its surface. The stainless steel and the droplets reflect the surrounding space and other works, creating an illusion of another dimension.
 
These devices help Cho Hyo Ri’s work transcend the boundaries of painting as a medium, encompassing both two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms as well as space, serving as a portal that connects the present with the unknown.

At Cho Hyo Ri’s third solo exhibition, 《Horizontal Cocktail》, held in 2024 at the OCI Museum of Art, she drew inspiration from cocktails made by mixing various liquids to present scenes where time circulates. Whereas her previous works dealt with the past, present, and near future in a fragmented way focused on individual materials, this exhibition visualized the cyclical structure of time and space centered around specific materials and devices, guided by a movement path set by the artist.

In these works, Cho Hyo Ri draws upon various devices that have historically addressed the perception of time in painting, such as the concept of capturing specific impressions through light and color, the German Romanticism movement which moved beyond classical landscapes to focus on nature’s potential, Surrealism which maximized the distortion of objects and space-time, and further references including particular literature, cinematic framing techniques, and advertising imagery that evoke the imagination of visual scenes.

Additionally, the artist sought to visualize the nature of moving and flowing time by incorporating the cyclical structure of liquid images—constantly flowing, pooling, and evaporating without a fixed shape—into her work. First, within a virtual environment created using 3D software, she applied gravity to the liquid images and set the values and directions of wind speed and lighting to construct a situation reflecting the sense of time.
 
At this point, the artist focused on the transparent particles moving in all directions due to the liquid’s gravity and friction, introducing transparent cocktail glasses as a device to give form to the drifting time.

The fluidity and cyclical structure of time operate in tandem with the exhibition’s layout. The painting Cocktail to Go (2024), installed at the entrance of the exhibition, begins from the artist’s perspective as she contemplates the outside world from inside a moving car. Metaphorically suggesting motion, the back of this work features another painting, Sunglass and Mask (2024), which depicts the artist’s body inside the vehicle—although the body itself is erased—and the outside space seen through the windshield reflected in her sunglasses.
 
These two canvases, simultaneously projecting inside and outside viewpoints, mediate the interior and exterior, implying a sequence that subverts the boundaries between physical space and time, as well as between reality and fiction, which plays a crucial role in the exhibition.
 
In addition, the contrasting motions of sunrise and sunset, along with the time of day represented by twilight—positioned on the boundary between these opposing temporal axes—appear throughout the works. This twilight landscape symbolizes the flow of time in the artist’s work, where past and future coexist simultaneously in the present.

 In this way, Cho Hyo Ri realizes the illusory nature of images through various methods and compositions that encompass painting, sculpture, and space. Based on her experiences of seeing and feeling reality, the artist imagines a multidimensional space-time where multiple perspectives and materials overlap. She then expands the resulting work from a flat surface into space, guiding viewers toward an unfamiliar, fictional experience of time.
 
Cho Hyo Ri’s painterly practice touches upon the boundaries and sensory modes of traditional painting, drawing attention as a form of “meta-painting” that offers insights into the possibilities of contemporary painting.

 ”Fishing images out of the floating flow of time while leaving errors in place.”    (Cho Hyo Ri, Artist’s Note) 

Cho Hyo Ri earned her B.A. in Painting from Hongik University and her M.A. in two-dimensional art from Korea National University of Arts. Her solo exhibitions include 《Horizontal Cocktail》 (OCI Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Extended Play》 (Gallery ANOV, Seoul, 2021), and 《Your Clock is BEHIND / Your Clock is AHEAD》 (Gallery N/A, Seoul, 2020).
 
Cho’s work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Hysteria: Contemporary Realism Painting》 (Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), 《Window Reconstruction》 (Amado Art Space, Seoul, 2023), 《Rales, Wheezes and Crackles》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2022), 《Usefulness – User Friendly》 (Eulji Art Center, Seoul, 2022), 《The Seasons》 (ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul, 2022), and 《Gongjungchelyeon(Air Practice)》 (LaLa &, Seoul, 2019).
 
In 2023, Cho Hyo Ri was selected as one of the ‘2024 OCI YOUNG CREATIVES’ and was recognized as one of the ten emerging artists to watch at Frieze Seoul 2024.

References

• 조효리, Cho Hyo Ri (Artist Website)
• 갤러리 엔에이, Your Clock is BEHIND / Your Clock is AHEAD (Gallery N/A, Your Clock is BEHIND / Your Clock is AHEAD)
• 리바트, [신진탐색] 자메뷰, 어쩌면 데자뷰
• 비애티튜드, 기이한 환영의 세계
• 아트인컬처, 쨍그랑! 감각의 해방
• 디스위켄드룸, [서문] The Seasons (ThisWeekendRoom, [Preface] The Seasons)
• OCI 미술관, [서문] Horizontal Cocktail (OCI Museum of Art, [Preface] Horizontal Cocktail)