Exhibition: Urban Narratives – The City as Canvas (April 2025)
Curated by Fern Messa Joson
Saejoon Oh is a Seoul-born artist whose photography reveals the shifting emotional undercurrents of city life. With formal training in theatre theory and history, Oh holds an M.A. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. While his creative roots are in dramaturgy, his lens now captures the unscripted drama of urban life—its beauty, its instability, and the often-overlooked narratives that unfold across its surfaces.
His work has been featured in exhibitions in Seoul, Paris, and London, and it reflects an evolving dialogue between realism and abstraction. What begins as a documentation of the visible city gradually gives way to a deeper expression of unease, resilience, and social tension. Informed by recent political events in Korea—including a failed coup in December 2024—Oh’s recent photography speaks to the fragility of civic trust and the volatility that simmers beneath even the most composed streetscapes.
Instagram: @saejoon_oh2
Currently Exhibiting in: New York City
Featured Artworks at Bushwick Gallery
Undergoing a Coup
- Medium: Photography (Archival Pigment Print)
- Dimensions: 60 x 40 cm
- Year: 2025
- Price: $800
- Description:
Shot in stark black and white, this work captures a Seoul intersection steeped in silence. It’s an image of the city paused—unpopulated, uneasy, seemingly untouched yet emotionally volatile. Shadows press against concrete and glass, while light ricochets off empty streets, amplifying a sense of surveillance and absence. Through composition and contrast, Oh transforms a familiar urban scene into a psychological portrait of a city in suspense.
The World is Safe Again. But… for how Long…
- Medium: Photography (Archival Pigment Print)
- Dimensions: 60 x 40 cm
- Year: 2025
- Price: $800
- Description:
Two silhouetted workers hang suspended in a tangled mesh of utility wires, surrounded by architectural silhouettes and fractured skyline. The composition is delicate, almost brittle, and suggests the tension between control and chaos. This work is less about labor than it is about the fragility of systems—power, infrastructure, safety—and the people who risk becoming part of the very structures they hold together.
Urban Narratives Exhibition Details
Dates: April 3 – April 10, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 3 | 6 PM – 8 PM
Theme: Capturing the raw, vibrant energy of urban life—graffiti, street photography, and more—as the city becomes both subject and surface.
Artistic Vision
Saejoon Oh’s images urge us to see beyond the city’s polished exterior. With the observational eye of a historian and the sensitivity of a dramatist, he documents moments when the city breaks character—when its inhabitants, systems, or facades falter, exposing the emotional and political weight of urban life.
For Oh, realism is not the absence of interpretation but the beginning of inquiry. His photographs reveal how the ordinary can fracture, and how quickly a place we trust can feel foreign. “My work constitutes not poiesis, but praxis,” he states—an act not of construction, but of reflection and response.
In Urban Narratives, Oh offers a vision of the city not as backdrop, but as a living, unstable protagonist.
Guided audio experience
For accessibility, the full video transcript is provided below for those who prefer to read or are unable to listen.
“You’re standing before Undergoing a Coup, a photograph that seems to hold its breath. Shot in stark black and white, the image captures a Seoul intersection that feels both familiar and foreign—frozen mid-scene, stripped of motion and stripped of people. There are no cars. No pedestrians. Just the architecture of anticipation.
Notice how the shadows lean sharply across the pavement, like silent witnesses. Light glints off surfaces—glass, steel, concrete—but there’s no warmth. The city is paused, yet alert. Every detail, from the angles of the buildings to the empty crosswalk, contributes to a strange theatricality, as if something just happened… or is about to.
Here, the city becomes a stage, and what we see is a scene of psychological suspense. Look again: is this serenity, or surveillance? Calm, or control?
Created in the wake of a failed coup attempt in Korea, this piece becomes more than documentation—it’s a reflection of civic fragility. Oh doesn’t show us protest or chaos directly. Instead, he shows us what remains when people disappear: the uneasy quiet, the tension beneath a surface that’s too still.
As you linger, let yourself feel the dissonance. In this urban silence, everything speaks.”