Untitled (X-ray Paintings Diptych), 2009,
Oil on canvas on archival ink jet, 72 x 54 inches each

Untitled (X-ray Paintings Diptych), 2009,
Oil on canvas on archival ink jet, 72 x 54 inches each

Michael Joo opened at Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Anemone, 2009, Bronze, patina and enamel paint, steel base, 73 x 50 x 34 inches



Untitled 2009 Roe deer skull, graphite impregnated polyurethane resin, pencil
11 x 3 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

Stripped (Instinctual) 2005
Urethane foam, epoxy resin, enamel paint, hand-built epoxy, glass, wood
185 x 87 x 170 cm

Present for you 90 x 193 cm Acrlyic on canvas 2009



Present 130 x 97 cm Acrlyic on canvas 2009



Floating_B 91 x 73 cm Acrlyic on canvas 2009



Floating_B  100 ×100 cm Acrylic on canvas 2010

The basis of my work starts from the curiosity I have towards why people behave the way they do and why certain things happen.

I believe that the combination of tradition, habits, culture, religion and many other social values are the stepping stones in creating one person or one nation’s history.
In order to understand the world we live in, I habitually pull important points from my surroundings to create rules. With these rules I come up with a formula that helps me to remember one aspect of life. I then create numerous formulas that interconnect with one another to make up the many layers of our everyday lives.

This is the process I use with my paintings, I create layer upon layer to create a multidimensional work that is all connected with one another. There are various shapes that are hidden in the works and if looking carefully one can see that even these shapes can all connect with one another; my work, in essential, is a landscape of all of these shapes and layers. - Park, EunYoung

Einöde 2009 Ink and Acrylic on Canvas 250x160cm

Headlong Flow of Lines

Kwanyoung Jung’s pictures are a silent and forceful means of penetrating and knowing the world.

Kwanyoung Jung, a friendly, cheerful researcher of the unknown who comes from South Korea and lives in Berlin, is animated by the urge to communicate and by absolute determination. He belongs entirely to himself. He is a specialist of the line. He most likes to work on primed canvas, sometimes on paper. He uses 2-4 mm broad brushes, Korean ink, and acrylic paints.

Kwanyoung Jung’s decelerated gaze finds its place within hurtling modernity in his own labyrinths of lines, which tell how life can look in the expectation of intrusion into its structures. Stringently and as if it could be no other way, they penetrate the strata of time, softly elapsing, floral, in complex order and the greatest possible simplicity. Despite all the abstraction of the results, Kwanyoung Jung follows a representational way of thinking. The titles of his works also bear witness to this; they carry on a dialog with what is real as what is seen. The only question is where the artist is at a particular moment – in the micro- or the macro-perspective.



Hügel 2009 Ink and Acrylic on Canvas 260x150cm detail



Hügel 2009 Ink and Acrylic on Canvas 260x150cm

Kwanyoung Jung, who studied in Halle, paints and draws details of the world, thereby creating moods. Nuances of hue, responsible for what is idyllic and anti-idyllic and tied to the earth, reeds, or stone, stimulate the tightrope walk between accessibility and inaccessibility. In any case, they dismember the coziness in which the German bourgeoisie has set up house in the period after the fall of Communism.

When Kwanyoung Jung works on his pictures, it is a strict, quiet, monological procedure. The artist turns to himself. A quite tone of communicativeness does not begin to sound until these pictures are brought among people, but also only if someone indeed desires entry to these labyrinths. Sometimes one has the impression that Kwanyoung Jung is the visionary monk by the sea, that enigmatic man in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting (1810) who stands in a salient position on a deserted beach. He turns his back to us and looks out into the depths of the universe. If he were to see something we don’t see, he would communicate it to us only in a whisper.

Christoph Tannert (Business Manager of Künstlerhaus Bethanien)

Kwan young Jung

Organic Solidarity, Mixed Media on canvas, 72.7 x 60.5 cm, 2012

Seoul in the 21st Century has been made rapid progress since the Korean War in 1950. Outwardly it looks remarkable but it has caused side effect, Defeatism. The defeatism – an acceptance of defeat without struggle – is endemic in our society. For example, the Salvation Army which is the biggest charity organization in Korea had become a hotbed of corruption. Nowadays we know that no matter who donated a lot, the poor cannot get any help. Also a turnout of vote of the National Assembly is getting lower. Because we know it will not make any changes, but make a fat purse. Moreover the members of Korean Alliance progressive movement even are old fashioned men whose thoughts are all wasted. It is like assembling too old parts into an Ipad4. All of media, structures and systems delude us into thinking we are living in the new glittering world. However they actually make us be alienated and isolated with desperation toward genuine progress what we eagerly wanted.

Images which are embodied in my painting have narratives about incidents and accidents that are caused the defeatism in the society. The images are spurting throughout the land and blowing up to the progress as uprising and movement in the past. But it produced byproducts. They break cover themselves and then finally they are about to embark on pollution and metastasis against the main systems, structures and media with sneering.