Witness III
Sook Jin Jo
4/29/23-6/18/2023
WITNESS III
Franconia Sculpture Park is pleased to present in conjunction with International Sculpture Day, Sook Jin Jo: Witness III, a sound installation in the Mardag Gallery. This work is a generative iteration of a previous work, “Witness,” originally installed in 2017 at the Forum Schlossplatz in Aarau, Switzerland and later, in the form of the site-specific piece “Witness II,” presented in and around the indoor museum and the outdoor park of the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea in 2021.
“A tree that has lived for several hundred years is a symbol of life and a witness who silently observes the world – – a witness of time, space, and human history. The sound installation “Witness lII” is a mixture of sounds that occur in the world of nature and throughout human existence: the sounds of birds, wind, waves, children playing, everyday life, trains, horns, church bells, whistles, typewriters, soldiers marching, a music box, gunfire, the sound of bombs…
When visitors genuinely connect with the work, “Witness III,” they become witnesses as well.”
Witness III opens at Franconia Commons on Saturday, April 29, 2023 with a public reception with the artist from 4pm-6pm, and will run until June 18, 2023.
Please also join Franconia Sculpture Park and Sook Jin Jo at 6pm on Tuesday, May 9 for a Virtual Artist Talk on Facebook Live.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Korean-born, New York-based artist Sook Jin Jo 조 숙 진 is a multidisciplinary artist. Over the past 35 years, Sook Jin Jo has produced drawings, collages, photographs, sculptural assemblages, performances, installations, public works, and architectural design works. Originally because canvas was too expensive for her as a young artist, she started to use plywood and began to explore found wooden materials. Continuing her work with this medium, she has discovered infinite possibilities for painting, sculpture, installation, and beyond. She often chose marginalized sites for her outdoor installations and public artworks. Most of them are site-specific and collaborative, working with professionals and local people from diverse communities in many countries, including Sweden, India, Poland, Switzerland, Korea, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil, and the United States. Jo’s works can be seen in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea; the Seoul Museum of Art in Korea; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Korea; the Erie Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia; the Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut; the Arko Art Center in Seoul, Korea; the LA Metro Detention Center in Los Angeles; and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Miami. She also designed and built two Art House Chapels; one in Tipitapa, Nicaragua (2018), and one in San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala (2021).
