Rockella Space is pleased to present Ebbs and Flows, which marks Paul Rho’s debut solo exhibition in New York. Showcasing his multimedia work spanning across photography, ceramic, installation, and sound, Eunice Chen, the curator of the exhibition, will organize a space where people can experience the changes of time and space, nature, and the cosmos and engage with local communities.

A multimedia artist whose interest lies in the materiality of photography, Rho’s interest in the moon, which serves as a major inspiration for his work, begins with his fascination with time, tradition, and nature. As time passes in a daily 24-hour cycle, the sun sets and the moon rises. During the Joseon Dynasty, people made wishes upon the moon, and the moon jars, crafted by anonymous artisans, are considered the essence of Joseon white porcelain representing elegance and simplicity in response to the core Confucian value of ‘etiquette (禮)’ of the time.1 When the artist spins the pottery wheel to create a moon jar, he contemplates the cyclical nature of time embodied in the rotating clock, the Earth’s rotation, and the seasonal changes following the solar terms. His interest in the fluidity of the universe and the cycles of time and nature are intertwined with the temporality generated in the process of image formation through developing photographs in the dark room.

The central piece, Tidal (2023), embodies this interest through the meticulously sculpted multimedia work. Made with a traditional Korean Mulberry Hanji paper coated with a gelatin silver emulsion which was then cast around a moon jar, also made by Rho, the work includes a sound component by Julian Zehnder. The twelve jars surround the space clockwise with Hanbok made by the Korean artisan Cheonshik Yang and ceramic bells newly created for the exhibition. The temporal shifts and temporal cycles created within this multimedia piece resonate with the artist’s own diaspora, who has lived in Argentina, the UK, and the United States after leaving Korea at the age of 14.

Resonating with Chen’s curatorial priorities which focus on migration and diaspora, body and space, environmental injustice, and critical urbanism, Chen writes, “(Paul’s practice) reminds me of a sentence by Song Ci: ‘People have sorrow and joy, as the moon waxes and wanes. The seasons turn, each in their own time. Ever changing, never changing.2 … Rho’s photographs are not just digital images; they are variable dimensions that measure space and invite viewers to walk in and experience the intricate interplay of time and space.”

-written by Jiwon Geum