Tread Water

Fluttered leg and arm motions cut through the water: back and forth, back and forth. Maintaining a steady breath: in and out, in and out. A swimmer treading water holds their body upright keeping the head, chest, and shoulders above the surface as their arms and legs move continuously. It may appear like they aren't moving much at all, but maintaining the verticality of the position requires coordination hidden just below the surface. The youngest of six, jiwoong's uncle Kyungmin Joo (b.1975-2024) was a beloved and boisterous man. Tragically, after surviving a motorcycle accident in his twenties, the artist observed his uncle's personality shrink. He kept to his room, watched baseball, smoked cigarettes, and talked on the phone. He lived like a ghost, drifting through the family home at odd hours. In hindsight, jiwoong recalls his late uncle in this way: a person treading water.

Tread Water is jiwoong's first solo exhibition with the gallery. Using photographic techniques, welded metal, and augmented ready-mades, the artist laces his uncle's lived experiences and observed behaviors with the items and architecture of the apartment where he, his uncle, his mother, and aunt lived in Seoul. The exhibition makes use of a photographic archive from the artist and his family. Two UV on durabond panels, Family, and Ripple, were taken by the artist on his last visit to Korea in 2021, which image splashes of light contouring the walls of their home. In the entirety of his family's photos, there is only one image of jiwoong's uncle: a picnic scene, which the artist has distorted and segmented into a grid of twelve panels in the wall work Squint. Though a pleasant moment, the scene was striking to jiwoong, how the splay of food, scattered shoes, reaching hands, and squinting eyes mimicked his uncle's accident. His composition is selective, illustrating how a traumatic change ripples through every part of a survivor's life, even the past. Water Vessels, varied metal boxes laid on the floor, reference the limp Joo walked with after his accident. One mirrored acrylic panel has a hair brush laid on it, acting as a displacement, a good memory hidden in plain sight.

Joo's dedication to baseball is reimagined by the artist as an example of samsara. A baseball player runs in a circle, returning home only to begin again on his next run. At the end of the cycle comes release. Rendered in metal, MN-049.0507.bKM (2025) mimics the birth of a celestial body. Around the time of Joo's death, NASA published the first ever photograph of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. Seeing this, Jiwoong wondered if this is a possible suggestion for the afterlife, a transfer of energy. Amidst his grief, he noticed the distance between himself and his uncle's fading presence, then rebirth, perhaps as a star.

JIWOONG JIANG (b. 1985, Seoul) is based in New York City. Studio Art BFA School of Visual Art Photography and Video 2018. Hunter MFA Studio Art 2023. jiwoong's practice is built on delicate observations and connections. Working in post-photography, he explores how the charge of past experiences, pleasant or painful, informs new or anticipated encounters in unexpected ways. These instances of surprise, moments that are surprisingly painful or surprisingly beautiful, are collected and transmuted into photography and sculpture, often thinking in terms of exhibition and narrative structure.