ACC Exhibition Artist Jeong Ju Jeong
The Contemplation inside the Light and Architectural Space
Summary
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- #May 18 Democratization Movement
- #Light
- #Jeong Jeong-ju
- #Architectural Space
- #Building Model
- #Video Camera
Artist Jeong Ju Jeong
Artist Jeong Ju Jeong was born in Gwangju in 1970. The artist graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany in 2002 after he majored in sculpture from Fine Arts, Hongik University in 1995, and acquired Ph.D. in art from Kookmin University Graduate School in 2015. Since 2002, he has opened 15 private exhibitions in Seoul, Japan, China, Belgium, etc., and participated in numerous group exhibitions from home and abroad, such as The Future is Now (MMCA, Gwacheon), and Thermocline of Art (ZKM, Germany). He contains the unique atmosphere of each space into the three-dimensional architectural structure by exquisitely arranging the basic architectural conditions and explores the problem of 'By which visual conditions the unique aura of each space is experienced' through the eyes of the camera that is involved in the structure. He was awarded the Kim Chong Yung Art Award in 2010 and Gwangju Shinsegae Art Award in 2003 and has participated in the Geumcheon Art Factory in 2009, National Goyang Art Residency in 2006, and Ssamzie Space Residency in 2003. He is currently working at Sungshin Women's University, College of Arts.
- ju36@naver.com
- https://www.jjju.com
He was working on his portfolio in his empty dorm. He felt a strong and warm light through the window. The light gave him a sense of difference, like a stranger, slowly moving as if it was petting the small room and suddenly disappeared. He oddly felt the surge of isolation and fear. This is what the artist experienced at the beginning of his life in Germany. The feelings he got felt familiar. He always thought of these moments, and one day a scene popped up in his mind—a scene from Gwangju Democratization Movement in May 1980. Being a fifth-grader, he hid inside his cotton comforter at home. The sound of the gunshot echoed through and made his nerve bristle up. He was scared, but at the same time, curious. Once it came to a lull state, he went out downtown with his siblings. The street was full of burnt cars and broken pieces of glass, and people were murmuring. While looking at the unfamiliar scene, he experienced an odd mental state with a mixture of fear, curiosity, etc. The light that came through his dormitory in Germany and the scene he had experienced in his childhood remained strongly in his memory and followed him around as if they were topics that he needed to resolve at some point.
Jeong first considered how he should embody this unfamiliar light that penetrated his room, a place that represented his inner self. He created a stereoscopic shape in the form of the light coming inside and filled the light into the interior of the shape. Then he installed a small size video camera inside the model to observe the figure of light permeating into the inner side of the model and connected a monitor so that the observers could watch the video from the outside. After continuing these kinds of experiments, he gradually expanded his works to expressing an architectural space with lights coming in. One of his representative pieces from his early works, dormitory, is a model that depicts a floor of a student dormitory that his close friend used to live. In this dormitory model, five rooms are connected to each other; each room has a window to its front and is installed with a surveillance camera. The surveillance cameras are crouching inside the dark repeating the process of gradually approaching in and out towards the window while staring into the outside of the window where the light is coming in. The audience can observe the image of what each surveillance cameras capture in real-time through the monitors placed under the dormitory model. If an audience approaches to examine the inside of the dormitory window, the audience will appear on the monitor in a big shape. So even when the audience approaches to observe something, the only thing they will see is themselves. What the surveillance camera shows is not only the perspective of the audience but also the psychological perspective of the author, who carefully examines the strangers outside with curiosity and fear inside the room.
Jeong, who used to work on models of his living room, friend's dormitory, gym, and other buildings around him as topics, had a hard time figuring out what to work on for a while after he came back to Korea in 2002. In the process of tinkering and tweaking, he created models of exhibition halls or historically meaningful buildings. Then, with his private exhibition at Plus Gallery in Nagoya, Japan, in 2007, he started a series of City of Gaze, which dealt with buildings and cities, etc., that has already disappeared or will be disappearing in the future. He created the exhibition building where he held his private exhibition and the surrounding buildings into models after hearing that they would be demolished due to a road-widening project. He also chose an operation method of installing small-sized cameras inside and outside of the building models to show one to three videos to the audience. The series was presented in several private exhibitions in Vanguard Gallery in Shanghai, China in 2008, Gallery Chosun and Kim Chong Yung Museum in Seoul in 2010, added more buildings from Nagoya, Shanghai, Seoul, Ilsan, etc., and grew into a small city. If the work dormitory he created while studying in Germany focused on its relationship between the work and the audience by connecting the building model, surveillance cameras, monitor, and audience with a linear method, City of Gaze series allusively suggests the stories about the memories and emotions of the author, as well as society and history by using compositive perspectives created by various building models and many small-sized cameras installed in and out them. Especially in the process of continuing the series the City of Gaze, he was gradually connected to the memories about the 5.18 Gwangju Democratization Movement he experienced in his elementary school years, and the feelings of unreality, fear, and a curiosity that he got inside the city, where all functions have been paralyzed, are expressed as an illusion-like feeling, emptiness, anxiety, etc., through the perspective of a small-sized camera installed in and out of the empty building model.
Jeong, who has always worked on his pieces with interest in architectural spaces, found an opportunity to use Korea's traditional architectures and gardens in his works. In 2018, Gwangju Municipal Art Gallery held an exhibition under the name The Sky of a Thousand Years, The Land of a Thousand Years to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of Jeolla-do appearing as its name on the history and the 12th Gwangju Biennale together. In this exhibition, which reinterpreted the history and culture of Jeolla Province through modern art, thirteen artists were invited. Among four parts of the exhibition, he displayed Soswaewon for ‘Land of Humanities’, which dealt with the taste for the arts and pavilions culture. While Soswaewon took a similar method of work to City of Gaze by using building models and small-sized video cameras, it is still unique in that it newly interpreted. The artist used mixed clay to create 40x50cm size ceramic plates with celadon crafting method, connected them as if asserting a broken relic to recreate the space of Soswaewon, and placed two pavilions’ models on it. He also distributed small-sized video cameras here and there so that they could all face towards the Soswaewon model. Behind the model, the perspective of the video cameras spread out in black and white, which arouses a strange atmosphere as if they are exploring rough and old relics, unlike the beautiful and ideal sceneries easily seen in the traditional oriental paintings. His work makes Soswaewon, which already possesses a fixed image by the public, seem very unfamiliar. The work was also displayed in the exhibition Circulation, which was hosted by the Korean Cultural Centre UK in 2019.
Artist Jeong Ju Jeong strived to reveal his memory of Gwangju in May 1980 more clearly at the City of Gaze series. In City of Gaze-Gwangju series, Jeong used Jeonil Building, former Jeollanamdo Provincial Office, the former Armed Forces Gwangju Hospital, and Sangmugwan as his source of work since 2017. Among them, his work The Armed Forces Gwangju Hospital of 2019 is especially remarkable. The work was displayed in 2019 Area-Asian Artist Matching Exhibition directed by ACC. The exhibition, which presents works of artists from Jeolla Province and other Asian artists under the same theme, invited various artists that worked with light, history, and space under the theme LIGHT ON THE MOVE in 2019. Jeong Ju Jeong from Gwangju and Rangga Purbaya from Indonesia were the invited artists. The two artists revealed the painful history from their perspective views. The Former Armed Forces Gwangju Hospital by Jeong was about the building designated as historic site No.23 of 5･18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. It was a hospital where citizens tortured and assaulted by the martial law enforcement headquarters in 5･18 received treatment under surveillance, and the building is now neglected after 2007 when the national armed forces hospital moved to Hampyong. Light percolates through the model that resembles the old hospital building as if there is somebody. Seven video cameras are installed both in and out of the model, and the videos captured by these video cameras are transmitted to seven projectors and appear in a circular shape in many of the exhibition walls. The videos with blurred edges look as if the hospital building is reminiscing with difficulty the painful memory of the past paved on its old and infirm body. The images of empty buildings in the video give a sense of emptiness, at the same time serving the role of strongly arousing public opinions about the historical wounds that took place within the building. The work was displayed in the exhibition Between the Visible and Effable, which was planned as part of May to Day, a project executed by Gwangju Biennale to commemorate the 40th anniversary of 5･18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. Interestingly enough, the place of the exhibition was the former Armed Forces Gwangju Hospital. The exhibition was more meaningful as it was displayed in the place of the historical scene when the work itself is about the historical scene.
Other than the City of Gaze series, Artist Jeong has also been attempting a new form of work since 2017. He escaped from his method of work, which captured the changes of light and space through specific building structures and video cameras, and started to use the light and space more abstractly. These works are called the Façade series, with its characteristics of being installed on the wall in the form of relief. Of course, the Façade series wasn't there in the first place. Jeong worked on the floor plan using the 3D program for his installation work, and one day he tried adding in the changes of light to his 3D floor plan using animation techniques. Starting with this, he experimented various pictorial image works that contained the changes of light since 2010. In this period, he researched spaces from Edward Hopper's painting or medieval holy pictures and gradually became more interested in the shape and color that light creates in a space. Here, he took one step further and converted a two-dimensional photographic image into a 15cm deep square-shaped box relief. Within these square boxes, there are around three layers that make the box different in shape and angle, and colorful LED lights are also installed inside the structure. At the beginning of his work, he installed these square boxes parallel to the walls, but in Façade 2021-1, he piled up 160 square boxes vertically to create a special structure. The structure diffuses colorful lights resembling the stained-glass windows from medieval churches. It is a work that emphasizes abstract formativeness using light and architectural space.
Jeong Ju Jeong, who is now in his 50's, is seeking more changes to improve his abilities even further. Currently, he is deeply researching abstract sculptures with light and architectural space in the center. He will especially try three-dimensional works followed by relief work that is attached on the wall. As an artist, this process of new experiments can always be burdensome and tough, but he still manages to feel joy and a sense of accomplishment in the process of evolving while achieving even the smallest results. It also means that his contemplation towards light and space that have been existing for a long time has been specified into meaningful works. These days, he is busy preparing for many exhibitions planned in late fall. New works are once again preparing to be born from his atelier.
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Written by Jong-Ok Baek. icezug@hanmail.net
Photo. JeongJu Jeong ju36@naver.com
2021.10
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