Passage : Artificial Paradise: Daun Jeong, Eunjeong Choi

SEOJUNG ART is pleased to announce Passage: Artificial Paradise featuring works by Jeong Daun and Choi Eunjeong from June 20 to July 17, 2022.

Jeong Daun utilizes materials that are used in daily life to express spontaneous feelings through “Fabric Drawing” instead of reproducing and embodying subjects. Meanwhile, Choi Eunjeong’s works draw out limitless imagination from a flat surface to draw viewers into a fictitious world. These two artists present such an amusing space, designing time and space. All subjects and materials found in their works feel both new and familiar, and also unfamiliar yet not completely foreign. The Third Space is made up of finely designed signs that do not rely on what has been seen, remembered, or felt before and acts as a passage between what we “see” and what we “imagine.”

Jeon Daun draws “Fabric Drawing,” changing a material’s characteristics to draw with fabric rather than with paint. Fabric is arranged as if mixing paint, and other materials such as leather or lace are used depending on the circumstances and the feelings being expressed. Fabric pieces made by the artist are shaped differently, spread, and stretched to cover the sturdy canvas. The emotions felt by the individual in that one space and time are remembered along with the dynamic movements of the fabric. The artist covers these pieces in a thin cloth as if to hide them, and brings to mind the music that the artist was listening to while working on them to present another melody. All of the possibilities that can be realized with the characteristics of the fabric are expanded upon, requiring a certain perspective and sensation to experience the exhibition.

The fabric pieces that make up the exhibition space are overlapped to create gaps that attract attention and make viewers imagine how they would feel to the touch. The exhibition makes viewers think about how the materials were originally used and how they fit into the exhibition. The materials are naturally more than just tools or methods for a certain purpose, and become the subject for a story to be told. The artist’s experimental attitude in searching for new materials and studying their characteristics reflects the artist’s intention to create communication between objects and their artworks.

Choi Eunjeong’s works are filled with elaborate symbols as if to create a digital space allowing the viewer to imagine a fantasy world. The artist creates a virtual world and ties together scenes inside the world to form memories, making a space inside a space over and over again. Materiality of three-dimensional paint sometimes creates an optical illusion that requires to be viewed as a completely different dimension before being recognized as a two-dimensional canvas. The cheerful painting depicted like a paradise makes the viewer think of a perfect space instead of giving distance from the unfamiliar. The unfamiliar composition, illogical space, and geometric links that can’t be seen in real life all represent a “hetero-ecotopia.” This term is combined the concept of “heterotopia,” first elaborated by Michel Foucault, “different space” from the everyday space, with ecological utopia. “Hetero-ecotopia” is the most accurate word to represent Choi’s work.

Historically, ways to create a utopia in an artwork have undergone both small and great changes, and have been presented in complex manners. Classic motifs such as an unknown background, marble temple, a woman lying on a leopard skin stripped of its wildness, and other methods were consistently used. But Choi created remarkably different sceneries by twisting the world we already knew, filling with formative elements, combining and breaking them repeatedly, just like adding dreams within dreams. The images, closer to digital art than to traditional paintings, are results of the artist’s accumulated strokes and labor-intensive actions. This utopia that could only be conceived by surreal imagination shows that it can be recompiled into structural and firm memories through the artist’s hands.

 

The “passage” specified in this exhibition is a concept first created in the early 20th century in Paris by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) that suggests a visual utopia with a “new city landscape” and “new spectacles.” At that time, visual elements decorated the streets of Paris were increased, creating an unfamiliar effect where daily life gradually drifted into a different kind of splendor and beauty. The past does not remain as a fixed truth, and is made fluid by being endlessly reedited through the possibility of expression and memories. Jeong Daun’s fabric and Choi Eunjeong’s imaginary space both share a piece of the “passage.” The planes, installation, and blend of stacked and added visual materials are anticipated to serve as a bridge between the viewer and a new imaginary space.