JEAN DESIGNART l PRESS RELEASE
Kim Yunjung 《HABITAT》
JEAN DESIGNART is pleased to present 《HABITAT》, a solo exhibition of Kim Yujung from May 10 (Wed) to June 3 (Sat). Artist Kim Yujung carried out a large-scale installation work in which she placed a fresco-style painting that revealed the meaning of wounds with a scratch technique and tillandsia, a living plant, on objects and spaces. Through her work, expressing plants that have been forcibly relocated from natural spaces to artificial spaces due to human destructive desires, she has been willing to become an active mediator between nature and humans.
This exhibition presents the artist's recent frescoes and paintings, including her representative ‘Warmth’ series, which is owned by national and public art museums and companies. Through a new installation of Tillandsia plants, the appearance of space caused by human desire that has restrained nature is presented. It provides an opportunity to think about the relationship between humans and nature through various works by the artist, who has been working for a long time with a reflective perspective on the relationship between life and civilization and the power of plants.
<Still Life Garden> (2023), installed in the gallery on the first floor, is an installation work in which artificial commercial objects are wrapped in tillandsia. make a landscape The artist, who has worked on the themes of human dominance and socialized plants, presents a colorful space production through plant installation work while transforming artificial commercial objects collected by the artist into a living language and a new body that has gained life. She also provides the audience with the experience of freely moving between plants and humans through works that transcend the boundaries of painting, sculpture, and installation beyond the first-floor windows-like frame.
The nature in the frescoes displayed in the gallery on the second floor are usually plants that live together with humans in urban spaces. The artist explores the relationship between nature and humans through plants that have been transplanted by humans and adapt to the changed environment and expresses the artist's psychological inner side through the act of scratching. The artist defines ‘scarred nature’ as a process in which plants are repeatedly transplanted and discarded, such as being moved next to human habitation by humans in the form of gardens and parks or abandoned again. The artist's fresco work effectively captures this 'scarred nature' by painting black on the ground made by covering lime mortar mixed with sand, lime, and water, and then scratching the surface with a spatula and a chisel to paint the plant's surface. represent the image. In addition, through the scratch, the white inner flesh is pulled up over the black skin as if scratching, conveying the 'scarred nature' to us in a realistic way.
‘Bassia scoparia’, a plant in the painting on the 2nd floor, is spreading nationwide due to its power to attract people by exuding a red energy with a strange and mysterious atmosphere. Through the <Hiding Crowd> series of paintings, the artist expresses the appearance of nature that is becoming a tool just because plants have red that humans prefer, that is, because they are the appearance of nature from the human point of view. In addition, the artist wants to capture the intensity of the red plant and the way it disperses or floats and moves like a gas rather than staying in one place.
In line with the current post-COVID-19 era, various environmental issues are directly related to the lives of all mankind, and various ecological considerations are emerging. Based on ecological philosophy, this exhibition discusses the connection between environmental and social problems, Provides a place of friendliness. The artist's anxious and mysterious space direction looks like the end of civilization, but through the active intervention of the viewer, attention is paid to the ontological position of contemporary plants, that is, the irony of forming a parasitic relationship that needs to be taken care of by humans. It is hoped that the artist's world of art, which is transforming the environmental destruction problem into an urgent need for environmental practice, will give us an opportunity to think about the ecological and human problems we are facing today.
Kim Yujung (b.1974)
Kim Yujung continues to expand her spectrum by working on a wide range of paintings, frescoes, photographs, and plant installations. She assumes that the artist's work is a weak but powerful being that forms a group or group and shares the point at which the audience sublimates aesthetically by feeling the sight of breath and collective power created by plants.
Solo exhibitions
2022 ≪Land of Pleasure≫ Art Center Art Time, Seoul
≪White Apple≫ KS Gallery, Seoul
2021 ≪Red Air and Afterimage of Edge≫ Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul
2020 ≪Submerged Vessel≫ Seo-gu Cultural Foundation Jeongseojin Art Cube, Incheon
2018 ≪Plants Also Have Power≫ Sophie Gallery, Seoul
Collection of major works
Government Art Bank
National Museum of Contemporary Art Bank
Seoul Museum of Art
Suwon I'Park Museum of Art
Seongnam Arts Center Cube Art Museum
Busan Museum of Art
OCI Museum of Art
E-Land Cultural Foundation
Namdo Cultural Foundation
Incheon Cultural Foundation, etc.