[COLOGNE] Distance from Zero: Sohyun Ban

CHOI&CHOI Gallery presents Distance from Zero, a solo exhibition by Sohyun Ban, on view at Exhibition Hall 2 of the Michael Horbach Foundation in Cologne, Germany, from 27 March through 26 April 2026. Marking Ban’s first solo presentation in Germany as an artist represented by CHOI&CHOI Gallery, the exhibition introduces recent works that examine the process of painting through which images emerge and sensory impressions become embedded in the pictorial surface.

Distance from Zero is a series of paintings that begins with the question: “At what distance do we encounter truth?” The visual inquiry begins with the canvas as a “point of zero,” an open field not yet defined. From this point of departure, the work expands into reflections on distance, perception, and the relativity of recognition. The title of the exhibition encapsulates this initial state and reveals an attitude toward painting that remains in the process of becoming.

From a distance, the works appear as lyrical and expansive landscapes. The colours feel harmonious and the compositions suggest a sense of visual order. Yet as viewers move closer, these landscapes gradually dissolve into rough, almost childlike drawing lines scattered across the surface. In this series, beauty and decorative qualities function as the first layer that invites the viewer’s gaze. Beneath that surface, intentionally imperfect and raw lines remain visible.

As the viewer shortens the distance to the painting, the familiar landscape transforms into a field of unfamiliar symbols and colliding lines. The chaotic scribbles seen up close raise a question: what is deemed the “correct” image? Is the harmonious landscape perceived from afar the only correct view? The shifting visual experience created by the distance between viewer and canvas suggests that the ways we perceive phenomena can never be absolute. Distance from Zero moves beyond a simple binary of right and wrong, instead acknowledging the countless differences and distances that exist in between, and proposing a reflective journey toward locating the “zero point” between oneself and others.

Ban’s spontaneous working process originates from a trembling sense of anxiety. Rather than suppressing this instability, the act of painting tends to intensify it, functioning not as a means of avoidance but as a form of direct confrontation. The impulse to leap in before fully understanding, and the refusal to take time before beginning the process, may appear somewhat reckless. Yet the process of gradually resolving that imperfect start becomes the very force that sustains the work.

Within this process, painting functions less as a final product than as a method of thinking. Every trace, including those that were accidental or mistakes, remains visible on the surface, forming a field where record and reflection coexist. What the artist knows and does not know are always intertwined within the work, offering a faint sense of how far the artist has come and where the journey began. Each painting arrives at this point through a different trajectory, and in much the same way, the artist has also arrived here from a place that was once zero.

Distance from Zero records the subtle distances that emerge from an empty point of departure, along with traces of sensations not yet fixed in language. Within this accumulation of differences, painting quietly reveals itself as a living scene.