In her latest works on paper, colour is much more present: subtle yet undeniable lights. The traces of large paintbrush gestures hold an important place -like a liberation, a new breath. One can recognize the impulse of certain calligraphers. Looking closer, one notices that these big movements juxtapose themselves with minuscule touches of ink or pencil. These transform the gesture into an element of landscape -the “base” of a mountain or an underwater wave -when it is not simply an expression of energy. If Min Jung-Yeon has often sought to make contraries meet through her depicted subject matters, she has now let go to express them in the differentiation of the gesture itself. A new strength emanates, an unbounded power thatarises like a storm. Or a delicate breeze that carries you…

For a long time now, travels, exile and identity questionings have been the subject matters of Min Jung-Yeon’s work. Thus, before creating the ensemble exhibited for Yesterday I understood today better (Hier je comprenais mieux aujourd’hui), the artist created a series entitled The Road (La route). In these works, she speaks about her move from Paris to the South; the fevered state of leaving, the blend of exaltation and anxiety.

The Road (La route) led her to a new life, in which the infinite sea has now become her everyday setting. This drawing and painting series immerses the spectator in the intimacy of the artist’s home. She exhibits to the world a series of portraits of her mother, memories of her father, feelings regarding her love life, her fears and thoughts about being a young mother, her boredom or her daily joys….

Y E S T E R D A Y   I   U N D E R S T O O D   TO D A Y   B E T T E R

From now on, Min Jung- Yeon has to compose with an everyday life made of repetitive tasks and find a meaning to a quite banal life. She is living the reproduction of a pattern she knows: When she was a child, her mother would redo the same gestures again and again while offering her the image of a comfortable and unwavering security… The artist is now in her mother’s role and her understanding of what she lived at that time modifies itself. What seemed to be so clear yesterday appears as an illusion today. Life reveals itself to be complex and sometimes absurd; maternity and wedded life a series of contradictory feelings, happiness and doubts. The beliefs of childhood are no longer. Yet she must struggle and find the strength to also make believe: To offer the promise of dawn. Times are superimposing themselves. Today becomes yesterday – yesterday today. Min Jung-Yeon is at the same time herself and the mirror of her mother. Yet the reflection in the mirror is altered.

The everyday covers the truth, says the artist.

* a reference to Romain Gary’s novel: Promise at dawn (La promesse de l’aube), Gallimard, 1960

E V E R Y D A Y   L A N D S C A P E S

It’s this simple life, without extravagance that the artist is expressing in this new ensemble of drawings and paintings. Yet, the artist’s works do not resemble classic interior scenes in the least. While working with these topics Min Jung-Yeon is not explicit but metaphoric: Mountains erect themselves, grottos are dug; there are eruptions, scattered rocks and storms rising above the sea.

In this manner, Min Jung-Yeon is the heiress of Asian landscape paintings and drawings, where nature represents the state of mind of people who live in it. She is also influenced by miniature landscapes that her father created from a stone collection – a way of bringing nature inside the home.

Thus, the weariness in front of everyday domestic tasks becomes The Cliff of Laziness (Falaise de la Paresse ) – a mountain of languor to climb or a soft coat of procrastination in which to curl up into. Frustrations, resentments hide away under The shelter of a misunderstanding (l’Abris d’un malentendu), form menacing clouds in Before the rain (Avant la pluie) and become explicit in The Hour where ice melts (l’Heure où la glace fond).

The feminine is flexible and in transformation – a salt statue the sea absorbs little by little; the masculine, structured and solid, like a wall that only shakes under big blows. The dialogue is not simple; these two strengths confront each other, sometimes merge or live in simple juxtaposition.

To the drawings’ minute and almost obsessional graphic line are added the softness, the sensuality and the unpredictability of watercolor. The use of this new technique has become so clear to her since she is living overlooking the sea. It expresses the days going by, that merge into each other as wave movements – but also a soft melancholy, a soothing.

The artist’s work has evolved towards a new suppleness where abstraction has gained in importance and the pictorial space has opened itself.

B A C K G R O U N D

Born in 1979 in South Korea, Min Jung-Yeon graduated in Fine Arts (Hongick University, Seoul, 2003 and the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris (ENSBA), 2005). Showing regularly in Asian, European and Middle Eastern galleries since 2004, she also participated in Medi(t)ation, the third Asian Contemporary Art Biannual presented in the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts in 2011.
The GALERIE MARIA LUND has been working with the artist since 2010. The gallery hosted her first solo show in France Memories from a greenhouse (Mémoire de la serre) in 2012 and has shown her work in fairs and collective exhibitions (Contemporary drawing Salon – Drawing Now, Paris, 2010, 2011 and 2012). Min Jung-Yeon was the winner for the third edition of the Partners’ Prize (Prix des Partenaires) held by the Museum of Modern Art, St. Etienne Métropole. She was rewarded with a solo show of her drawings during the summer of 2012, along with a catalog. Min Jung-Yeon’s work has been the subject of a dozen catalogs and numerous publications in the media in both Europe and Korea. Hibernation, a monographic publication appeared in 2009.
Her series of paintings and drawings The Road (La route) was presented at the YIA Salon in October 2014 where it received an enthusiastic reception.

“The limit between reality and fiction is useless because you can actually fully live in an unreal world”. *

During a trip, Min Jung-Yeon found herself in Madrid’s central station where she discovered a big greenhouse. She was overcome with a desire to penetrate inside it, to pursue her journey there rather than getting back on the train…The discovery of a botanical oasis at an architectural junction of man’s movements significantly marked the artist. Later, it inspired the painting Madrid Station (La Gare de Madrid), an emblematic work, where the organic, dream-like “jungle” is juxtaposed with realist, figurative elements in a multiple plane composition.

The accumulation of impressions is permanent in all beings. Hand in hand with the act of forgetting, only the essence remains, what is essential – a souvenir. Min transforms her experiences and emotions in order to go from the personal, the individual to the more universal. In her world, order doesn’t exist, there are no limits: time, space and matter are created, modified and move in an incessant process, a perpetual movement between past and present, visible and invisible, fiction and reality, structure and form, rational and irrational.

Memories from a greenhouse 

Playing on the double meaning of the word “mémoire”, memory in French – meaning either a souvenir or an extended academic dissertation which questions and makes observations – Min draws up an inventory of her own, personal greenhouse with its specimen and phenomena. Spaces fluctuate, are autonomous and artificial, a reminder of the virtual video game universe which is an integral part of the artists’ reality and generation: straight lines and geometric forms are combined with fluid lines to create encounters, confrontations, separations or destructions in a perpetual starting over: New Game!

The artist mentions feminine forms embodying softness and masculine structures which are carriers of energy. These opposing yet complementary forces are fundamental to Min’s unusual world. Unusual yet not surreal, despite the formal resemblance to the Surrealist movement, the artist does not aim to transcribe the unconscious. Images come from her imagination as well as the objective study of reality. Min aims rather to reveal the complexity of our world, to enlarge our field of perception and perhaps, our idea of beauty.

Media

Different in their expressive form, Min attaches equal importance to drawing and painting. For her, drawing is like breathing. It allows her significant psychological freedom and greater spontaneity in its creative process. The artist plots minutely in Indian ink using a very fine ink pen. Few colours, in watercolour or pencil occasionally enhance her compositions. These can be distinguished due to their precision and graphical purity. Only the predetermined number of minute strokes in each zone, following a personal logic, represents a form of constraint. Inversely, Min’s acrylic compositions require further rigor and a deeper reflection leaving less room for improvisation. They do however offer greater physical freedom with the possibility of wider movements as well as the enjoyment of colour.

Background

Born in 1979 in South Korea, Min has been drawing since the age of three. She graduated in Fine Arts (Hongick University, Seoul, 2003 and the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, 2005). Showing regularly in Asian, European and Middle Eastern galleries since 2004, she also participated in Medi(t)ation, the third Asian Contemporary Art Biannual presented in the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts in 2011. The French public has been able to appreciate her painted work during the exhibition Neo-graphie, bringing together a selection of Korean contemporary artists at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2010). Memories from a greenhouse (Mémoire de la serre) is Min’s first solo show at the GALERIE MARIA LUND. The gallery presented her drawings at Drawing Now art fair (2011 and 2012 editions) and in the group show Accrochage 2(2010).

Min is this year’s winner for the third edition of the Partners’ Prize (Prix des Partenaires) held by the Museum of Modern Art, St. Etienne Métropole. She has been rewarded with a solo show of her drawings at the museum this summer 2012, along with a catalog. Min’s work has been the subject of a dozen catalogs and numerous publications in the media in both Europe and Korea. Hibernation, a monographic publication appeared in 2009.

Other events

Demandez le chemin à mes chaussures, (Ask my shoes the way) solo show at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, June 23 to September 30, 2012 – www.mam-st-etienne.fr

Planter une île dans un pot, (Planting an island in a pot) group show of Korean artists at the Atelier Gustave, 
36 Rue Boissonade, Paris 14^th arrondissement, September 13 to 24, 2012 – www.ateliergustave.org

* Min Jung-Yeon interviewed by Olivia Sand, Profile, Jung-Yeon Min, Asian Art, Jan.2012, p. 14-15

This play on words underlines the tension that exists between appealing to the senses – a language specific to the fine arts – and an art work’s capacity to provoke reflection and eventually a more profound understanding of existence.  The plurality which can be found in both ‘sense’ and ‘senses’ – lying between narrative, fantasy, organic, tangible universe and consideration for matter – reflects  the artistic choices of the GALERIE MARIA LUND. A wide range of expressions are represented: painting, drawing, sculpture, photo, video and installation. GALERIE MARIA LUND has a deep attachment for the contemporary ceramic and glass scene.