G.E. Lessing once wrote that a poem is a completely sensory speech, that is to say, it is an intensification and quite immediate compression of artistic form which opens our complete sensorium to new prospects. Although Lessing intended this observation to be for the written word, these aspects can help one to understand the non-literary work of Jong. Through the means of minimalistic room sculptures and fragile, far-reaching room installations of changing work develops a sensitive fineness, beauty and compression, as we know from the field of poetry. Oh, refers to these correspondences concerning poetical works in view of his own work and writes: "The works becomes subtle and restrained visual poems. Each only a few line long, but addressing the universal."
It is primarily the interplay of a sensitively select array of material and spatial production which allows that feeling of a room poem to arise. Oh positions his materials very precisely, including materials such as coloured threads, glass panes through to fine wood slats of fragile metal sticks. Everyday materials that become something special through their meticulous placement. So that a wood slat seems to float horizontally in the room, while another floating in the room acts as the edge of a carefully hung up glass pane. Decisive for the setting up of these installations are the existing specific conditions in the respective rooms, i.e. wall lengths, corners or floor joints and constructive elements of architecture. Things and forms in everyday use, features of architecture that we pass by and do not notice. Oh's interventions fundamentally change this disregard, in which the works emphasize, on one hand, the architectural form and also the reaction that emerges from the mood of the architecture. On the other hand, the interventions provide a kind of increasing of awareness on the observer with regard to their capacity of perception. Oh's works sharpens the sensorium and therefore creates not only another perception of the room just walked through, but something that is not far from encouraging a subtler and finer perception of the world. One could therefore regard this work as a kind of particle decelerator, one which opposes the consumption orientated mode and encourages a new perception of values.
Besides this central idea of the increasing of awareness in Jong Oh's work, the oscillation of his work between the sculptural-installation form and the room-installation form is also an aspect that is particularly necessary to stress. This dimension of his work is connected centrally with aspects of close-up and distance. While the process of close up work is demonstrated in Oh's sculptural concreteness and materiality, the work develops a rather graphical quality in the distance -- they become graphic elements which bring calm into the room and with extricate movement. Exactly connected with this minimization or oscillation, is a reference to traditional minimalistic room sculptures and room installations which find their origins in the 1960's. These can be recognized in the works of Stephen Antonakos, Peter Downsbrough or Fred Sandback, and later continued in the fragile installations of Jan Meyer Rogges in the 1980's. Also here, the sculptural and graphical connect with each other again and again. But aversely to these often seemingly hectic installations, Oh's work seems quiet and bordering on disappearance. And in this respect his works, even when Jong Oh's creations can be placed in the context of these historical approaches, take a path that goes beyond this reference room, are strong and independent and captivation through their subtle and fine poetry.