Hyeree Christina Mary Ro. Born in Seoul, the artist grew up in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, and California; she currently resides in Brooklyn. She attended elementary, middle, and high school in both Korea and the US before completing her undergraduate studies in Korea and her graduate studies in the US. As an artist, she is based between the US and Korea.

These descriptions, which are inevitably included when explaining Hyeree Ro and her work, give some sense of how much “moving” there has been in her life. They also show the ways in which she has revealed her own life through profound connections with her work. Ro is familiar with creating work that is easy to transport, and she is a pro when it comes to packing quickly. She transitions naturally between languages to suit the time and place, and she is adept at expressing herself at length in short words. She excels at presenting her own stories as if they were not someone’s stories.

The exhibition August is the cruelest has Hyeree Ro sharing memories associated with summer, moving, journeys, partings, and loss. At times, what feels most aching is the sense of loneliness and loss that comes in the middle of the summer, when everything is green and life is at the peak of its growth, and we find ourselves thinking of the things that will soon wilt and fall. We imagine a scene from summer, when the intense heat has ruthlessly wrested everything away.

In the past, Ro’s objects have taken on abstract shapes that do not recall any specific referent. Recently, they have begun taking on more concrete forms. Items that allude to travel and movement are positioned in the gallery in inverted or twisted forms that render them unable to perform their proper function. A car that cannot be driven, a tent that cannot be slept in, a kayak that cannot sail—and the memories of Ro and her father mingling within them.

The interior of a car makes people be at a closer distance than usual, with seats placed side by side so that they face the same direction. The unique sense of distance creates a more delicate sort of relationship than we would find in a face-to-face conversation. Situated at the gallery’s center, the work Niro (2024) is modeled on the Kia Niro car that Ro’s father used to drive. The US is a country where one’s means of transportation is closely tied to one’s survival. Cars thus come to take on a certain status that goes beyond their value as mere property to determine the form and class of one’s very life. “Made in Korea.” “Might as well buy Korean.” The state of being unable to fully choose at the threshold between two worlds creates recursive choices that rely on what we have gained on our own and on memories of what seem to have been ours. To assume the place created in the car’s backseat and look out past the windows at the falling water is to endlessly recall the sense of crossing over toward someplace, imagining the places that a person has never had and will never have the chance to visit.

In contrast, Carry (2025) presents a tent so small that at most one person could sleep in it—but even that does not appear to be possible. It would be awkward and uncomfortable inside, either alone or with someone else. Typically, tents are produced with lightweight wire structures that bend to allow for portability. Ro’s tent was made by welding together square metal tubes—it is angular and resists folding. Meanwhile, the cover, which would normally be durable to conceal the interior, is instead transparent enough and with occasional gaps to faintly view what is happening inside. An incomplete shelter that does not allow either for movement or for settling in, it harbors something larger inside than what it originally possessed.

At the end of a long, narrow corridor, we find Catalina (2024). A kayak is a means of traveling over the ocean, but it also carries the risk of death or a similar fate. Because of that, it necessitates the presence of two people who trust each other fully and coordinate the movements of their hands and feet. But in its upright position with its bare skeleton suspended from the ceiling, Catalina cannot exist as it is supposed to either on land or in the water. Hovering in the cramped space is the sense of a “togetherness” that has drifted while crossing the ocean. It is time now to exit the long hallway. There is no shortcut.

Taken together, the overturned objects, fragmented words, and incomplete movements form a letter. It is a letter that cannot be immediately read or understood—but Ro relies on that very impossibility, presenting a message to a recipient who can no longer be reached. The act of writing and reading a letter with no recipient is both a confessional act of attempting to embrace the memories left by someone or something that is no longer there, as well as a gesture of connecting with the outside through the most personal things we possess. The empty page is covered by unfinished stories, time that has passed by, and various names and words. One day, the letter may be delievered.

* The exhibition title is taken from the 2016 song “August is the cruellest” by the Singaporean band The Observatory.

Hyeree Ro (b.1987) is an artist primarily working with sculptural objects and multi-lingual fractured narrative-based performance. Ro presented solo exhibitions at Canal projects (2024, New York, US), project space SARUBIA (2022, Seoul, KR), gallery777 (2017, Yangju, KR). Her works has been exhibited internationally including, Soorim Cube (2024, Seoul, KR), Billytown (2024, The Hague, NL), AHL Foundation Gallery (2024, New York, US), Leeum Museum of Art (2022, Seoul, KR), Ilmin Museum of Art (2019, Seoul, KR), and Akiyoshidai International Art Village (2017, Mine, JP). In 2017, She had participated in DOOSAN ART LAB Exhibition 2017 (2017, DOOSAN Art Center DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, KR).