Born in Seoul, Korea.
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Henry Oh is a visual artist and educator.
He earned his BFA in Painting/Ceramics from Otis College of Art and Design, where he currently teaches in the Adult Extension and Summer of Art Youth programs.

My work directs viewers to take an extra step—crouching, sitting, bending down, leaning in, looking up, and looking down. I make work that encourages physical movement and engagement. This embodied interaction, I like to think of as the way children move through a playground. I create spaces that invite lighthearted connections while also leaving room for deeper reflection. The objects individually become vessels, literally but more so conceptually, for personal narratives and memories that I unpack as a way to reflect and search for my sense of purpose and belonging. Collectively, they evoke an impulse to explore and gather. My recent projects take familiar objects and place them where they may feel slightly out of place, shifting how they’re perceived – whether nestled within wooden structures or resting openly on their surfaces. These subtle shifts invite viewers to question how we arrive at ideas of closeness or distance, use or display, intimacy or exposure. My innate pull toward Korean forms and culture—despite being so foreign to them—I imagine feels similar to the urge many people have to seek out birth parents or family members they have never met. The work allows me to explore the in-betweenness I’ve lived with, never fully here or there, continuously negotiating and blurring the edges.  

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