The Oscar-nominated director returns to Korea with a breathtaking set of seven media installations, integrating his award-winning animated short and 2022 Seoul Space K animated project, for a 2-year run at the new House of Refuse complex on Jeju Island.
In many ways, Korean animator Erick Oh has changed the landscape of animation. After working at Pixar for six years before working with Robert Kondo and Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi’s Tonko House directing projects like The Dam Keeper, Oh also created an infinite loop animation in 2020 called Opera, which at the 93rd Academy Awards, became the first Korean animation in history to be nominated for Best Animated Short Film. In 2022 the animator joined forces with Baobab Studios to create Namoo, a narrative poem hand-painted and animated with VR software and real-time technology.
Now, Oh is returning to Korea to share his achievements through a breathtaking exhibition that harkens back to his origins… literally.
The exhibition, "O: An Erick Oh Retrospective," consists of seven media installations and offers the opportunity to encounter Erick Oh's short Opera and his animated project ORIGIN, which was exhibited at Seoul’s Space K in 2022. Oh’s latest large-scale exhibition is currently taking place at the new cultural complex, House of Refuse on South Korea’s Jeju Island and will continue through the next two years.
“Opera was supposed to be an exhibition piece from the get-go, but that didn't happen because of COVID,” recalls Oh. “That’s when I came up with the idea to make this cinematic version of Opera, which ended up traveling around the world and turned into something we never expected in such an incredible way. Now that it’s gotten so much credibility, I decided to have an exhibition like I wanted from the beginning.”
But Oh wanted to go big and go home, combining his exhibition plans for Opera with those of ORIGIN and getting Korean artists in on the magic.
"The music, which is loud and meant to support the design of each room, is a huge piece in this exhibition, and is designed by 250, one of the top Korean K-Pop bands today, in collaboration with Andrew Vernon, a sound designer who has worked with me in the past,” shares Oh. “Most of the animation production was done by well-known artists in the states, including Ruby Wang, the art director, as well as Clarisse Chua, the animator. Last but not least, the entire space is designed by AZ49, the interior team behind Haegue Yang, one of the most iconic contemporary artists of Korea."
The whole exhibition took roughly three years to pull together, from the sound design and set design to Oh and his team actually buying House of Refuse and its land. The building does have a coffee shop and an outside garden, but most of the structure is dedicated to “O.” In total, it takes anywhere from 40 minutes to over an hour to experience the exhibition.
“The animations are all perfectly synchronized together as one and each is on a five-minute loop where, for the first two and a half minutes, it’s daytime and for the other half, it’s nighttime,” says Oh.
He adds, “And it’s all on a narrative. When you walk in, there’s an opening animation that tells the story of the beginning of our humanity and the ‘Big Bang’ and all that. Then there are a few smaller pieces that lead you to this huge atrium where we have the 10-foot-tall Opera triangle projected on three walls. And that represents the present, where we are right now. At the end, there's a final piece which consists of a five-layered, transparent silk screen.”
The animation looks like a moving 360 camera shot, with blasts of color combined with handfuls of gears and tiny objects. It’s all separated out on these individual silk screens and, when a viewer stands in front of the final screen, it all comes together to create one image. This part of the exhibition is like gazing into the future and the past all at once, with the method of many screens making one complex image inspired by multiplane cameras developed by Walt Disney Studios. But, in true Erick Oh fashion, the animator took a traditional method and pushed it a few steps further.
“Overall, it’s a very spiritual experience, in my opinion,” notes Oh. “We’re showing where we came from, where we’re at, and where we are going. It’s somewhat abstract, but I was there for opening day and people said they could feel it and could really understand what I was trying to say.”
Though he created both works many years apart, Oh says he always had a sense that Opera and ORIGIN would fit well together to tell a bigger story.
“ORIGIN lives in the same universe as Opera and I had a feeling that, in the future, these two were going to play together,” Oh explains. “Of course, there are parts and features that separate them, so we had to rewrite some music, edit some of the timing, and add some new pieces and visuals.”
One of which is a giant grey ball, hung from the ceiling, with 3D-printed people attached to every square inch of this sphere.
“The title of the piece is ‘Corona,’” shares Oh. “It does look like CORONA Virus, but the actual Latin translation of Corona means ‘crown’ or ‘wreath.’ It was initially this positive thing but now we have this new understanding of Corona where it’s all about devastating disaster. So, it’s meant to ask the questions, ‘Are we a source of life? Or are we the virus? Are we killing, or are we giving life?’ I think many people will come to different conclusions. Personally, I think we’re both.”
While most of the exhibition includes 4K screen projections and animated media, there are a few pieces, like the hanging grey ball, which are physical sets. Haegue Yang and the AZ49 team also built extensive amounts of artificial grass and brush, flowers, and mossy courtyard centerpieces to help bring Oh’s animations to life in a physical space. In the atrium that features Opera’s pyramid, sections of long grass line the floor to create a makeshift river, down which animated fish swim in schools.
“I've been to a lot of different media exhibitions, interactive exhibitions, and animation installations,” Oh notes. “But I dare say there's nothing like this. It’s hard to categorize this exhibition because it’s so overwhelming, but it is almost like a musical show. The music is so loud that you can't even talk to anybody. But that’s intentional. We want you to be fully immersed in this world. And then there’s all the interior design supporting this experience. It all feels like you're teleported somewhere else.”
Oh and his production team are hoping to take “O: An Erick Oh Retrospective” around the world from London to Los Angeles. But, for now, the animator is enjoying being able to share his art with his country’s people.
“If this becomes a traveling show, the fact that it started from my home really means a lot on a personal level,” says Oh. “Truthfully, I don’t think I could have done something like this with Opera five years ago. That Academy Award Nomination made all the difference. It gave us the legs to run.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
