Erick Oh is the director of the short animated film “Opera.”
By Wu Jinhua
Photos = Beasts and Natives
“A living piece of art,’ works more like an eight-minute visual metaphor” (New York Times)
“Opera sets its sights on all of humanity” (Washington Post)
“Opera is what you’d have if you tried to turn a novel into an museum exhibit.”(a critic from National Society of Film Critics )
Director Erick Oh received these and other accolades from foreign media for his animated short film “Opera,” which in 2021 was nominated for an Academy Award.
His work was all the more remarkable as it was the sole Korean entry up for an Oscar that year as well as the only Asian work in the category.
“If you create the same things in a content society, nobody will watch it. I tend to focus on telling a story in my slightly different and unique way. I think they (Oscar) saw it positively,” Oh said in an April 17 interview with Korea.net at a cafe in Seoul.
The animator said he had been drawing for as long he could remember and never once thought of doing something else. Imitating the drawings of Disney characters as a child, he is now a promising Pixar animator who showcases his works to the public as well as creating his own artworks.
Oh emphasized the “unlimited expansion” in animation, seeing and approaching the genre not as a simple and fixed genre but an art based on imagination that connects elements in new ways. His upcoming exhibition will show animation as a type of art medium that breaks down barriers.
Scenes from “Opera”
Busily preparing for his exhibition “O: An Erik Oh Retrospective” that opens on May 25 on Jeju Island, he said, “Just like the title of my exhibition O, the circle reflects how one sees the world.”
Circles appear in many of Oh’s works as a crucial symbol representing his art. To describe his exhibition, he also selected “circulation” as a keyword as a circle represents the latter.
“I think the world is one gigantic circular circle,” he said. “Everything is perfectly connected to one another like a circle. Our lives flow in this circle. This is the philosophy and identity shown by my work.”
“Opera,” Oh’s leading work and the foundation of his oeuvre, encapsulates everything about humanity including life and death, class, environment, race and terrorism in an endlessly repeating cycle. This groundbreaking work neither has a narrative nor a protagonist.
His upcoming exhibition showcases “Opera” and eight works sharing the same worldview. Excluding “Opera,” the works were all drawn by Oh within the last three years and comprehensively display high-level technologies and techniques of animation.
Oh created “Opera” with exhibitions in mind. His original intent was to display the work at an exhibition space instead of in a movie to create a moving experience to give viewers the chance to appreciate his work without a set time frame.
Director Eric Oh works on “Opera” at his studio.
The COVID-19 pandemic suddenly forced him to scrap all of his plans. “It was very frustrating,” he said in remembering that trying time. “But I could call it a blessing in disguise. I re-edited and released it as the movie ‘Opera,’ which received such a positive response that it went to the Oscars.”
“Because ‘Opera’ attracted so much interest and recognition, I thought I should prepare a solo exhibition of my work. That was right after the Oscars, so it took me three years to get here,” he said in calmly explaining how he endured hardship to hold his event.
Oh paid as much attention to the exhibition’s music as he did to the visuals. The venue will feature sound so overwhelming that visitors will struggle to talk to one another, thus providing the experience of enjoying audio-visual effects at the same time.
The event’s music was also composed by DJ and music producer Lee Oh-gong, one of the most popular producers known for his composition of K-pop songs and his album “Ppong.”
On his plans, Oh said he will keep splitting time between Korea and the U.S. to work on his art. He is also creating a story for a feature-length movie of family animation for all ages.
He added, “I hope everyone who visits the exhibition gets the opportunity to widen their experiences of looking at the world and bringing it to their own lives.”
Oh’s permanent large-scale exhibition opened on April 25 at House of Refuge, a multicomplex cultural space, in the town of Aewol-eup on Jeju Island.
jane0614@korea.kr
