[Gallery Walk] The Life and Art of First-Generation Landscape Architect Jeong Youngseon

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art 'Jeong Young-sun: For All That Breathes on This Land'
Highlighting the Artist's Attitude of Listening to the Stories of the Land

An exhibition highlighting the life and comprehensive scientific-artistic world of Korea’s first-generation landscape architect Jung Young-sun is being held. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art announced on the 4th that it will host "Jung Young-sun: For All That Breathes on This Land" at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, until September 22.

Jung Young-sun For All Living Things on This Land_MMCA_Exhibition View [Photo by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

The exhibition retraces the life and work of landscape architect Jung Young-sun (83), covering half a century of dedicated landscape activities from his graduate student days in the 1970s to ongoing projects. Most of the landscape architect’s archives on over 60 large and small projects are being revealed for the first time. More than 500 various records, including pastels, pencil and watercolor drawings, blueprints, design plans, models, photographs, and videos, are displayed together in one place.

In particular, by carefully selecting representative works by theme, the exhibition reveals the context, concerns, and artistic efforts behind the design of natural environments within urban spaces. It reduces these reflections and philosophies to a story for all of us who pursue a life living in harmony with nature, beyond the professional scope of landscape architecture and architecture.

The exhibition title, “For All That Breathes on This Land,” is inspired by a poem by Shin Kyung-rim, whom Jung Young-sun admires. For him, landscape architecture is a comprehensive scientific art that uses everything alive?from microorganisms to the universe?as its material. Like Gyeomjae Jeong Seon’s true-view landscape paintings that aimed to depict the beautiful scenery of the Korean peninsula as it is, Jung Young-sun has listened to the stories of our land and made efforts to preserve the biodiversity of native species throughout his 50-plus years in landscape architecture.

Jung Young-sun For All Living Things on This Land_MMCA_Exhibition View [Photo by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

The exhibition space is organized into seven major “bundles”: ▲Paradigm Shift, Writing a Sustainable History ▲Korean Urban Landscapes in the Era of Globalization ▲Nature, Art, and Leisure ▲Rediscovery of Gardens ▲Dialogue Between Landscape Architecture and Architecture ▲River Scenery and Ecological Restoration ▲Plants, the Soil of Life.

As reflected in his landscape work, the exhibition is designed with minimally defined, loosely bounded sections so that visitors can find the context of each project from where they stand. The intentional overlapping and accidental encounters of non-exclusive themes, as if strolling through a naturalistic garden, is particularly impressive.

Jung Young-sun For All Living Things on This Land_MMCA_Exhibition View [Photo by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

A new garden has been created in the outdoor Jongchinbu Yard and exhibition yard at the Seoul venue for the exhibition. Additionally, to multidimensionally present the more than 500 landscape design records introduced in the indoor exhibition, videos by director Jung Da-woon focusing on the “temporality” of landscape, along with landscape photographs by photographers Jung Ji-hyun, Yang Hae-nam, Kim Yong-kwan, and Shin Kyung-seop, are also showcased. Actress Han Ye-ri generously donated her voice for the audio guide in this exhibition.

Kim Sung-hee, director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, said, “This will be an opportunity to deeply encounter Jung Young-sun’s landscape philosophy through the stories of his arduous struggles, persuasion, and realization process behind the ‘effortless-looking embellishment’ seen in his landscape works.”