Hong san, 2016, Encre de Chine et acrylique, 13 4/5 × 16 1/10 in; 35 × 41 cm
Pour mieux dormir, 2016, Encre de Chine et crayon de couleur, 6 3/10 × 9 2/5 in; 16 × 24 cm
La fin de la journée, 2014, Indian ink, watercolour, acrylic and colour pencil on paper, 7 9/10 × 7 9/10 in; 20 × 20 cm
Île 1, 2015, Indian ink, watercolour and acrylic on paper, 16 3/10 × 19 7/10 in; 41.5 × 50 cm
Migrateur, 2015, Indian ink and acrylic on paper, 10 × 12 1/5 in; 25.5 × 31 cm
Jung Yeon Min’s works are highly imaginative and rich. One finds multiple worlds, the extraordinary and the realistic, notions of micro and macro, and manipulations of space and time in her work. Specifically, her work offers two equal but divergent investigations. On the one hand, she envisions and explores a mysterious and fantastical world. In a separate but concurrent investigation, she examines the effect of time in the pictorial realm. Sometimes colliding, these two points of inquiry form an intriguing basis for a closer reading of Min’s works as opening up places of potential and possibility.
In the realm between the real and the virtual her paintings present imaginary worlds asking us to search for their specific force, their capacity for rupturing and transforming life. Tracing this force within her works offers an understanding of what her artwork achieves and her vision of our potential. Understanding her virtual world involves questioning the very possibilities of life. Min does not want us to see her worlds simply as familiar experiences; while she uses perspective as a technique to produce a sense of comfort and familiarity, she jolts us with a sense of the strange at the same time.
Her paintings show Min’s integration of the familiar world with that of the strange. While she uses perspective to demarcate the division between the world that we know and the virtual world, she emphasizes seeing strangeness in an environment that is known and safe. By displaying various perspectives of time and temporality in many of her works, she seems to interrogate the concept of time and its effects. We are left questioning, what in the painting is waiting for a transformation to occur?
Min never settles this question for us, leaving us unsettled about what exactly we are supposed to seeing, what we are supposed to be waiting for. Thus, she disturbs our conventional understanding of time as a progression, from one event or occurrence to another, to a more multi-layered perspective. The presence of realism allows the fantastical world to make sense, so what would otherwise seem strange becomes familiar and inviting. She disarms resistance to this otherness, change and difference. Her worlds offer a way of being that breaks out of boundaries, both geographical and temporal, and that challenges us to envision a life beyond convention.
Jung Yeon Min
