Frolics of Dots and Colors
- EvelineArtaut

When an artist yearns to paint but does not know what to paint, the agony is evenstronger than the desperation of one who yearns to love but lacks a lover.

It was while Cho Taik-Ho was in such a mind, when the familiar paints on his palette absolutely refused to fulfill their roles, that he noticed small circles of paint droplets on his atelier floor. This chance discovery opened a door for the artist to enter a new formative realm.

Now, when I look at Cho’s paintings created fromthe sublimation of circular shapes – inspired from those traces of paint thrown listlessly to the floor at a time of uncertainty and despair – I am convinced that they will lead the artist and hisaudience into a highly alluring and mystical garden of colors.While the paintings portray mountains, fields, ocean, marshland and mudflat, they also remind me of the uncharted world that mesmerized me in my dreams.

My first glance of Cho’s paintings,filled with circular dots, provided thethrill that I had experienced when I first saw the artist’s earlier works. I became excited at the thought that the dots might serve as a means to unravel the stories that had awaited the artist for so long.The small circles,forming a repetitious pattern on the coarse canvas,come together to create giant landscapes (the artist refers to them as dots, but they appear more likecircles to me).Theyresembledust sfloating in the air,or individual dewdrops found in the stillness of the morning; I would best describe them as oxygen molecules that enable us to breathe. The impression I received was that of chasing a ray of light piercing through darkness to find colors suspended in the air.

Cho’s formative domain, full of conviction in his earlier works, now appearsrestrained and peaceful -even naive. The carefully accumulated brush strokes no longer strive to resemble the artist’s previous intense formativeness. They present aesthetic and human shapes, amidst which the artist freely expresses the fundamental beauty of nature.Cho’s paintings appear to be frolics of circular dots.A circle signifies infinity without a start or an end. The dots,arbitrarily scattered on the canvas,render images of numerous molecules wandering around the atmosphere, depicting the mysteries of the universe.His paintings offer fragrance and comfort that invite our souls – this is why I like Cho’s paintings.

Looking at Cho’s work reminds me of impressionism and pixels.The industrial revolution of the 19th century, along with the inventions of the prism and the camera, gave birth to impressionism. The development of computers and the digital age in the late 20th century significantly affected the way artists viewed and expressed objects. At first glance, Cho’s work appears to use digitally transformed pixels, a technique deployed by many contemporary artists.However, his paintings contain personal and subjective pixels that are neither scientific nor logical.They are not like the early impressionist paintings of Claude Monet, and Cho does not apply color dots according to Georges Seurat’s ratio.

Perhaps, like Paul Cézanne, Cho is making dots to portray objects based on his intellectual and sensual reactions. Cézanne’s apples are on the verge of falling off from the table. His still lifes defy common sense, without any form of perspective. With paintings that exude the lure of Cézanne, Cho modestly beckons us with dots and colors that only he can express in this age of new technology, enriching our eyes and minds and allowing us to experience the spirit of the artist.