Artists Registry

At first glance Ho Jun Ji’s digital images may appear to be mere photographs, but upon further inspection the intricacies of his work are revealed. The viewer discovers that Ji is much more than an artist, but a scientist and perhaps, a philosopher. The microscope is his tool of choice to go beyond the limitation of human perception and to question what is understood as real and true.

The microscope has expanded the boundaries of flawed human vision. What is true and what is real is often defined as what is seen with the naked eye. But when viewed through a microscope, a once familiar object can suddenly become foreign. In Ho Jun Ji’s ‘Coin-cidence’ series, he enlarges a coin to the highest level of magnification, revealing a new and unfamiliar image. Ji was first attracted to the coin because of its familiarity. Our capitalist society makes currency and coins a necessary part of life. Coins are handled on a daily basis, and yet we often do not take the time to look at them because of their relatively small economic value. In spite of this, a coin wears on its façade a symbolic figure of society - an important character of history, an architectural work, or a cultural asset – reflecting the history and civilization of mankind. Ji overlaps the coins with pieces of newspaper articles. Newspapers are similar to coins in that they are made from a material that possesses little economic value, yet they transmit knowledge about important incidents and issues of their time, helping to form history. By combining newspaper articles and the coins in unconventional pairs, Ji endeavors to reconceptualize history. He juxtaposes newspaper headlines depicting the 9/11 tragedy with a magnified 25-cent coin that has a bent image of George Washington, next to the words, "In God We Trust." Ho Jun's works are not only aesthetically captivating, but also deeply reflexive and ironic. Through the odd pairings of images, Ho Jun rewrites history, reiterating the question: what is real and true?

Ho Jun’s work asks us to take a second look at the world around us, whether by looking at an object through a microscope or looking at history from a different point of view. When we do so, we find ourselves outside of our confined boundaries, accepting a different perspective of the world.

Ho Jun Ji was born in South Korea in 1980. Today, he works and lives in Seoul. He received his BS in Photography from the Sang Myun University in Seoul and his MS in Culture Technology from KAIST in Daejeon, Korea. He has been the recipient of many prizes, including the Grand Prize at the 11th Korean Advertisement Photo Contest in 2010 and the Grand Prize at the 8th Korean Fine Art Superior Artist Contest in 2008. Recent solo shows include two exhibitions in Seoul at the Jean Art Gallery and the Santorini Seoul, both in 2011. His work is part of several collections, the most notable being the Seoul Museum of Art.