BRONZE CAST 2, Bronze cast, 11" x 17" x 1.5", 2017
Drawing on her decades-long personal experience of displacement and immigration, Mimi Jung's new work explores the idea of assimilation. Through Jung's own identification with Korean, Asian-American and American cultures, her work examines the way individuals alternatingly accentuate and obfuscate facets of their cultures, based on their need to identify in a given environment. Her work questions what, if anything, exists at the core of cultural identification, when identification with one culture is dictated by the requirements of another.
NEON ORANGE TO WHITE, Polymer cords, copper rod, 34" x 48", 2016
A major theme of Mimi Jung's work is the tension between internal and external experiences, which she typically
presents to viewers through interactive, life-sized structures. Her flat woven wall pieces represent her primal explorations of this theme. Their creation allows a deeper understanding of her unique materials, colors, textures and compositions - their combinations seek the quintessential balance of consonance and tension. Due to their exploratory nature, Jung's wall pieces offer the most raw and experimental version of her work, as they guide new paths for her large-scale structures.
BLACK TO BLACK, Polymer on steel rod, 39" x 47", 2015
Through weaving and casting, Jung represents this selection process of absorbing and rejecting aspects of cultural identity based on a perceived contextual void. The gaps and loose edges of each piece suggest a potential lack of integrity in both the original and present form. Rather than drawing focus to the holistic, repetitive pattern created by the warp and weft, Jung’s pieces instead emphasize irregular regions of emptiness.
GRAY WAVES, Poly cords, paper and painted MDF, 51.75" x 46.5" x 2.25", 2016
A major theme of Mimi Jung's work is the tension between internal and external experiences, which she typically presents to viewers through interactive, life-sized structures. Her flat woven wall pieces represent her primal explorations of this theme. Their creation allows a deeper understanding of her unique materials, colors, textures and compositions - their combinations seek the quintessential balance of consonance and tension. Due to their exploratory nature, Jung's wall pieces offer the most raw and experimental version of her work, as they guide new paths for her large-scale structures.
Portrait taken w/ the latest commission: FALLEN SNOW, Natural fibers and wood frame 60” x 138" x 2" 2017
Mimi Jung's work examines multiple dimensions of self-preservation, particularly as it relates to private and public self-representation, and the ways in which those depictions are manifest through social and cultural mores. Her constructed forms, with their voids and translucencies, are fixed but never static; the viewer actively controls the experience of transit around and through them—reflecting inward on their own behaviors. In the end, Jung’s limning of space is reflexive, visible to those who are predisposed to see.
Born in 1981 in Seoul, Korea, Mimi Jung studied at Cooper Union and HGK Basel. She has mounted exhibitions at Chamber in New York City, Les Gens Heureux in Copenhagen, Design Miami/ in Miami and Collective Design fair in New York City. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Mimi Jung