Jongwan Jang, Mt.Melona, 2023, 227.5×364.3cm © FOUNDRY SEOUL

The country Jongwan Jang builds on his canvas is a strange one. According to the artist, he deals with faith and anxiety toward an ideal world by depicting scenes of paradise and utopia, but it’s far removed from what one typically imagines as ideal. It’s more like a strange world that one might fantasize about when lying in bed, unable to fall asleep. At times, it resembles a sacred illustration found in a leaflet handed to you by a stranger on the street saying “Be saved.” It even brings to mind the secular, kitschy paintings often seen in old barbershops. That’s why it’s hard to immediately grasp the true identity of Jang’s work.

Take Go West (2023), presented in this solo exhibition, for example. Sprouts fall from the sky, and everything that lives on the land flowing with milk and honey appears peaceful. In front of the text “서로 (Together),” otters and bees are seen enjoying dance and music. The ironic twist is that the word “서로 (Together)” simultaneously contains “Together” and “Go West.” As is well known, in the Bible, the west symbolizes the secular and the impure. So what is this work really trying to convey? I suddenly recall something the artist once said: “I prefer comedy to tragedy, and absurdist plays to comedy. I believe in the theory of original evil.”

Jongwan Jang’s solo exhibition at Foundry Seoul is significant in that it presents a cosmic landscape combining agriculture and futurism (which rejects tradition and expresses the dynamism of machine civilization as a new beauty). The 30 new works that make up the exhibition begin with a curiosity: “Is it possible to evoke a cosmic and futuristic atmosphere not through high-tech objects, but through pastoral motifs commonly found in rural areas?”

First, the characters’ distinctive hairstyles reference the shape and texture of Western orchids. Like flowers that have been selectively bred to suit consumer demands, this allegorically expresses the human form as it might change under the Fourth Industrial Revolution and climate change. Plants, typically perceived as fragile beings, now symbolize the current state of affairs where the term “plant-based” has quietly infiltrated our lives. In addition, the artist reveals a bizarre sense of dread that arises when looking at geometrically cultivated land through agriculture, and flowers and fruits that have been bred to be more beautiful and delicious.

Jongwan Jang, Go West, 2023, 227.3×181.8cm © FOUNDRY SEOUL

The overall green tone of the work is also intriguing. Like the aforementioned hairstyles, plants, and agriculture, green has ambivalent qualities. Wassily Kandinsky once criticized green, saying “It can become tiresome after it soothes the soul,” and Piet Mondrian said “The disorderliness of nature is unpleasant.” Though green is often seen as a symbol of healing and comfort, here it creates an eerie mood—no wonder Jang’s world feels strange. Yet the artist doesn’t lay these messages bare on the surface.

Instead, he composes peculiarly crafted images that provoke curiosity. They may seem tranquil at first glance, but upon closer inspection, they are far from ideal. Therefore, viewers visiting Foundry Seoul to engage with Jang’s work should not be lulled by the “Goldilocks zone” (an environment that is neither too much nor too little), but instead consider the discomfort that lurks behind the beauty—in other words, the bare face of the underside.

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