Kim Hyeran
The artist's studio is on the 9th floor in a high-rise building on Gangnam-Daero, one of the biggest and busiest streets in Gangnam. Studios don't usually come with a label unless they were purpose-built. They come in various shapes and sizes. A studio could have been chosen for the convenient location or the artist could have picked a particular place for the cheap rent. It could be a studio apartment or part of a detached house. But even so, Gangnam-Daero is well-known for its high rent and the area is full of English language institutes, shops, cinemas and restaurants. It's not a district which attracts artists as it does not have a university nearby nor does it have many galleries. I was curious as to why this artist picked this particular area of Seoul for her studio. Artist Heewoo Jeong told me about her work and her future plans.
Landscapes in the Media Age
On the wall of the studio, huge maps from the estate agent's and photos taken by the artist were laid out in a panoramic form. What was interesting was that since the studio is relatively high up, most of the photos were taken from above looking down. The artist remarked half jokingly that once she completes her work on Gangnam-Daero, she would move her studio and start a series of work only done on the 9th floor of buildings.
In the pictures, the skyscrapers were drawn from the front whereas the street, cars and people were depicted from up above, looking down. Building on either side of the street were spread across the screen from the top to the bottom as if reflected on water and I was suddenly reminded that the artist majored in traditional Asian art at university and that she had worked on an installation using photos and videos. One such work featured a mirror floating on a river and the images on the river and the mirror were recorded on camera. Is the artist then trying to tell us something about what the human eye sees as opposed to what the machine sees?
In urban surroundings, people are more used to riding in cars to walking. Before they go to places, they tend to look up places on the Internet or they refer to the navigation system in their cars as they drive. Many of us don't even attempt to go to a new place without the help of these equipments and when we use public transportation, we also have to memorize many systematized signs. Real landscapes have been substituted with signs and space is no longer three-dimensional and continuous but instantaneous and fragmented.
I got the impression that Heewoo Jeong's new works have changed in form but her interest in how people in modern society perceive things continues on. Four years ago, she questioned if what the camera sees is an objective record of what we see. Now she's asking the same question about what we see and what we record using our hands. It was interesting to see that this artist, who has until now been interested in looking at maps, someone who thinks machines have changed how people think, has now taken up digital maps as a material for landscapes in this media age. What then is the landscape of the city I remember?
Landscape that is not too objective nor too subjective
First, the size of the subjects on the painting follows the basic rules of traditional East Asian painting. Mountains are big, trees are smaller than the mountains and people are smaller than the trees. Her works were reminiscent of traditional paintings depicting historical events in that she depicts things as she see them. Buildings, trees and people are drawn not following the rule of perspective and there show multiple viewpoints.
The people in the landscapes are simplistic and small but they show individual characteristics of the age, such as sex, job, and their particular style. Most of them are office workers in black suits but since they are simplified and drawn from high up looking down, they look as if a deity is looking down at the world.
Modern skyscrapers and big streets have substituted the mountains and waterfalls in traditional Asian paintings. Skyscrapers especially are drawn beautifully just like the trees in the traditional paintings. Urban landscapes continuously change as we ride around in cars and the landscape full of road signs and patterns and digital maps might parallel reality in a different way than how we remember it. The artist tells us that the urban landscape is somewhere between images, signs, paintings of landscape and maps.
The artist's studio is on the 9th floor in a high-rise building on Gangnam-Daero, one of the biggest and busiest streets in Gangnam. Studios don't usually come with a label unless they were purpose-built. They come in various shapes and sizes. A studio could have been chosen for the convenient location or the artist could have picked a particular place for the cheap rent. It could be a studio apartment or part of a detached house. But even so, Gangnam-Daero is well-known for its high rent and the area is full of English language institutes, shops, cinemas and restaurants. It's not a district which attracts artists as it does not have a university nearby nor does it have many galleries. I was curious as to why this artist picked this particular area of Seoul for her studio. Artist Heewoo Jeong told me about her work and her future plans.
Landscapes in the Media Age
On the wall of the studio, huge maps from the estate agent's and photos taken by the artist were laid out in a panoramic form. What was interesting was that since the studio is relatively high up, most of the photos were taken from above looking down. The artist remarked half jokingly that once she completes her work on Gangnam-Daero, she would move her studio and start a series of work only done on the 9th floor of buildings.
In the pictures, the skyscrapers were drawn from the front whereas the street, cars and people were depicted from up above, looking down. Building on either side of the street were spread across the screen from the top to the bottom as if reflected on water and I was suddenly reminded that the artist majored in traditional Asian art at university and that she had worked on an installation using photos and videos. One such work featured a mirror floating on a river and the images on the river and the mirror were recorded on camera. Is the artist then trying to tell us something about what the human eye sees as opposed to what the machine sees?
In urban surroundings, people are more used to riding in cars to walking. Before they go to places, they tend to look up places on the Internet or they refer to the navigation system in their cars as they drive. Many of us don't even attempt to go to a new place without the help of these equipments and when we use public transportation, we also have to memorize many systematized signs. Real landscapes have been substituted with signs and space is no longer three-dimensional and continuous but instantaneous and fragmented.
I got the impression that Heewoo Jeong's new works have changed in form but her interest in how people in modern society perceive things continues on. Four years ago, she questioned if what the camera sees is an objective record of what we see. Now she's asking the same question about what we see and what we record using our hands. It was interesting to see that this artist, who has until now been interested in looking at maps, someone who thinks machines have changed how people think, has now taken up digital maps as a material for landscapes in this media age. What then is the landscape of the city I remember?
Landscape that is not too objective nor too subjective
First, the size of the subjects on the painting follows the basic rules of traditional East Asian painting. Mountains are big, trees are smaller than the mountains and people are smaller than the trees. Her works were reminiscent of traditional paintings depicting historical events in that she depicts things as she see them. Buildings, trees and people are drawn not following the rule of perspective and there show multiple viewpoints.
The people in the landscapes are simplistic and small but they show individual characteristics of the age, such as sex, job, and their particular style. Most of them are office workers in black suits but since they are simplified and drawn from high up looking down, they look as if a deity is looking down at the world.
Modern skyscrapers and big streets have substituted the mountains and waterfalls in traditional Asian paintings. Skyscrapers especially are drawn beautifully just like the trees in the traditional paintings. Urban landscapes continuously change as we ride around in cars and the landscape full of road signs and patterns and digital maps might parallel reality in a different way than how we remember it. The artist tells us that the urban landscape is somewhere between images, signs, paintings of landscape and maps.
