Paradox of Abundance and Emptiness, Belonging and Isolation
Explored Through the Eyes of Three Artists:
Kim Sujin, Jung Seohyun, and Jung Youngseo
The exhibition "Veil Undrawn: Open Veil," featuring three female artists born in the 1990s who live in a digital era where social networking service (SNS) images are consumed indiscriminately and endlessly proliferate, is being held at Vivian Choi Gallery.
This exhibition explores the contemporary psychological ambivalence of material abundance and spiritual emptiness, as well as the sense of belonging and isolation connected through SNS, all from the perspective of Korean female artists. Artists Kim Sujin, Jung Seohyun, and Jung Youngseo capture the subtle, contemporary sensibilities reflected beneath everyday subjects through their unique perspectives and original expressive techniques. While the depiction of images is highly realistic, the actual existence of the places and figures within the works is not revealed. This is a deliberate choice, intended to allow viewers' unique interpretations and the stories behind the images to flow naturally into new contexts.
Kim Sujin creates new images by combining fashion brand visuals encountered through subscription services or internet surfing with photographs she has taken herself. By collecting both the surreal photographs produced by various brands and her own everyday images imbued with personal narratives, she magnifies overlooked corners and understated painterly sensibilities. Through this, she highlights the processes of adaptation and survival within a social structure where the consumption and replacement of images are endlessly repeated.
A distinctive feature of Kim Sujin's work is the exclusion of faces from her pieces. Feeling burdened by the coercion of direct identification, the artist chooses to focus on parts of the body where emotions are least apparent-legs and feet-as well as expressionless statues and animal images. By omitting faces or unrealistically cropping and recombining body parts, she expresses inner paradoxes. The bodies, statues, and animals in her works reflect the artist's personal experiences of discomfort and warmth within human relationships.
Jung Seohyun, who works in Berlin, Germany, addresses fundamental questions about human existence by exploring the invisible yet real world, and the cycles of settling and escaping, choosing and wandering, loss and recovery that occur within it. She visualizes the sense of alienation and ambiguous boundaries she experienced after moving to Germany, where unfamiliar language and social structures prevail, through her own unique painting style. The emotions she feels as an outsider-desiring understanding but ultimately remaining misunderstood-are concretely expressed in works that exclude facial expressions.
Jung Seohyun's works feature borderlines that divide images like frames, and small fragments formed by the dots of these boundaries float across the canvas. This represents the concept of time as given to humans. For the artist, time is not linear but rather resembles fragments drifting within the flow of consciousness. These fragments sometimes overlap or are pushed aside, creating new meanings.
Jung Youngseo's work begins with objects commonly encountered in daily life, much like advertising images. She reconstructs them through the language of painting, going beyond simple replication or representation to draw out the emotional resonance hidden beneath the surface. Excessively enlarged frames, cropped compositions, and abnormal placements or empty spaces serve as devices to make familiar objects appear unfamiliar.
The exhibition runs from July 1 to July 26.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
