“While making lines, I was able to observe the flowing water, various floating matter, and the minute changes taking place in the surroundings. … The marks on paper looked almost identical but still different each day. … This record had no intended purpose. It was simply a written record of what I observed, and I considered it meaningful enough to repeat. It was not a conscious thought, but somehow intuitively, I felt better off doing it than not.”

Jihyun Jung, artist’s note, Same but Different Landscape, 2012.
 
Even for those who have long observed Jihyun Jung’s practice, it is not easy to explain his artistic world.

The sheer volume of his output—often several times that of others, a result of his distinctive diligence—the breadth of materials ranging from discarded objects such as waste plastic or scraps of wire to wood, Styrofoam, concrete, aluminum, and 3D printing filament, the scale spanning from thumbnail-sized objects to vast waterfront plazas, and the diversity of methodologies including found-object collage, casting, spatial installation, and VR sculpture, all contribute to a body of work that resists easy categorization.

This seemingly ungraspable diversity stems from the artist’s preference for new experiments over repetition. The result is a grand assemblage of objects that probe the formal possibilities of sculpture from every conceivable angle. While it is clear that his practice does not follow a structure in which early and later works converge around a singular, canonical piece, neither does it dissolve into completely disjointed fragments.

Beneath the outward dispersion of his works, there exist underlying attitudes and tendencies that run persistently throughout. These form nodal points that connect, combine, repeat, and vary. The intention of this text is to draw out these latent potentials and to render visible the ways in which they are interconnected.

The trajectory of Jung’s practice can be broadly divided into two phases, with the 2016 exhibition 《gomjumsum》 at Doosan Gallery as a turning point. His earlier works, which constitute the first phase, primarily consist of small objects loosely assembled from discarded materials. Like the whimsical yet melancholic worlds of a Tim Burton film, these imagined environments—constructed from eccentric and neglected objects—are populated by bustling kinetic sculptures.

Exhibitions such as 《Words Left Unsaid》 (Gallery Skape, 2010), based on his undergraduate graduation project, 《Away from Here》 (Project Space Sarubia, 2011), and 《Bird Eat Bird》 (Insa Art Space, 2013) represent this early period. In these exhibitions, Jung constructed artificial spaces of fantasy detached from reality.

In 《Words Left Unsaid》, he transformed the empty space above the gallery ceiling into a bizarre world reminiscent of Goya’s prints or horror fantasy. In 《Away from Here》, he installed temporary walls within the gallery to create a hidden room, while 《Bird Eat Bird》 utilized the building’s three-level structure to construct a labyrinth in the basement.

Within these spaces unfolds a peculiar paradise of discarded materials: a rusted tin can creaks like waves, an animal jawbone clatters while hanging from a notebook spring, and the legs of a toy horse scrape against a washboard, producing an uncanny rhythm. Such works have often been interpreted as a refuge from the violence of reality, as attempts toward alternative possibilities, or as narrative spaces akin to an attic of imagination.

While these readings capture certain aspects of his early practice, narrative itself is not essential. For Jung, narrative functions more as an efficient device of delivery; what matters more is the staging of a convincingly constructed artificial fantasy. This artificiality does not seek to conceal its difference from reality, but rather to expose it.

Like the inherent theatricality of a stage—where everyone knows it is not real, yet collectively agrees to believe in it—Jung’s constructed worlds do not hide their seams. Instead, they produce a persuasive immersion that rivals reality itself. It is precisely this kind of fabricated yet compelling world that Jung seeks to realize.
 
The artist’s interest in artificial worlds ultimately leads to his identity as a maker. The accumulation of discarded objects is far removed from a critique of modern civilization, from a Benjaminian retrieval of the past, or from the construction of an archive. Rather, his incessant gathering of things stems from the discovery of formal and sculptural potential within what might otherwise be dismissed as waste.

Jihyun Jung has consistently been drawn to the concreteness of making by hand, finding pleasure in the process of combining the colors and forms of objects. Recombination—detaching an object (or a part of it) from its original function and assigning it a new role—emerges as a central characteristic throughout his practice.

Rather than creating something entirely new, he repeatedly reuses what already exists, transforming its meaning, or recontextualizing completed objects so that they appear entirely different. This approach recurs across his body of work. For instance, his early work Nobody Knows Where (2012), produced during his time in London, involved constructing a boat from debris washed ashore along the Thames and releasing it back into the river.

Seven years later, in the exhibition 《Multipurpose Henry》 (Atelier Hermès, 2019), Infinite Metal (2019) derived geometric sculptural forms from construction waste collected at Platform-L Contemporary Art Center. The reuse of previous works is also frequent. A leg element from Bird Eat Bird (2013) reappears, transformed, as part of Rock Book in the exhibition 《ONE-A-DAY》 (Art Sonje Center, 2018), while wooden panels used as materials for performance and installation at the 2016 Gwangju Biennale are repurposed as the pedestal for Caught Sleeve (2023) in the exhibition 《Hangdog》 (Art Sonje Center, 2023). Structures from prior exhibitions are likewise often re-employed as installation materials.

In Entrance and floor (2018) from 《ONE-A-DAY》, carpets from a previous exhibition were reconfigured into a sculptural floor, while in 《Hangdog》, temporary walls used in the preceding exhibition 《Suh Yongsun: My Name is Red》 (2023) were reused as inclined pedestals.
 
What, then, is the direction of this endless cycle of rearrangement, recombination, and reuse? The methodology of “re-” becomes Jung’s way of speaking about the world. Here, this “speech” should not be understood as a direct statement or opinion, but rather as an attitude inherent to everyday life.

The artist likens this attitude to that of an “amateur.” Unlike a professional, who must produce out of obligation, an amateur is one who acts out of genuine interest. As someone who loves the act of making, Jung takes pleasure in observing the moment when an object becomes something else—when it is seen anew.
 
Drawn to defamiliarizing the cliché, he prefers reusing what already exists rather than creating anew. What is significant here is that the process is as important as the result. Beyond formal reconfiguration or conceptual reassignment, the very act of reviving an object that has fulfilled its function becomes essential.

This is also why many of his early works are kinetic: when movement is introduced to a static object, it is brought back to life. Rather than simply producing individual objects as outcomes, what matters more is conveying how the artist remakes something. His characteristic method of filling the exhibition space densely with works is closely related to this approach.

What he ultimately intends is not the form or message of each individual work, but the attitude of making that emerges across multiple works. The artist’s remark that he “attempted to neutralize the message through landscape” suggests that the position, perspective, and emotional tone revealed through repetition are more significant than any single object.

If the motivation behind his work lies in a love of making, and its methodology in recombination, then what precisely is the perspective through which Jihyun Jung perceives the world and its objects?

True to his tendency to demonstrate through action rather than words, Jihyun Jung has left relatively few texts that explicitly articulate his working attitude. The artist’s note written in the course of producing Thames(2012) is a rare document that reveals his position toward the world and objects. During his stay in London, he recorded the flow of the Thames River for more than thirty minutes each day, resulting in 153 drawings that are similar yet subtly different.

The act of repeatedly performing what appears to be a simple, almost ritualistic labor—closer to execution than depiction—may seem futile. Yet, the repetition of such purposeless action proves to be unexpectedly meaningful. “Looking back, the value of consistently observing a single point within the everyday landscape from one side of the world seemed to vary according to how much one remembers and reflects upon that moment.

Furthermore, as someone who believes that consistency is key to anything worth attempting, I had no choice but to suspend judgment and continue this work.” Persistence carried out without much thought is, on one level, repetition—but difference emerges precisely through that repetition. The river that flows in the same way each day gradually reshapes the terrain, while the subtle variations in wind and sunlight felt from one day to the next accumulate into seasonal change.

This attitude is well exemplified in Paper Drop Device : Little Heavier Than Before (2014), presented at PLATEAU. Each time the bell rings at eight-minute intervals, sheets of paper lightly coated with graphite fall to the floor in measured quantities. The degree to which graphite transfers onto the paper results from a contingent interplay of time and mechanism; depending on these slight deviations, the text inscribed on the paper may appear or disappear.
 
The sheets, made slightly heavier or lighter depending on the amount of graphite, elicit a faint, wry smile. This may be a response to the disproportion between the effort invested and the seemingly trivial outcome, yet the earnest yet ephemeral act of printing, combined with playful and poetic phrases, gives rise to unexpected reflection.

The attitude of diligently attempting something that ultimately amounts to very little permeates Jung’s practice. Works such as Suddenly, a Rainbow (2013), which produces a rainbow through a single burst of water and light at the final moment; Night Walker(2013/2017), which flickers busily according to patterns of text or image yet leaves no trace unless captured through long exposure; and the kinetic sculpture Rock Down Rock Up (2018), whose movement is so slow it becomes ambiguous, all present a kind of deadpan humor.

This humor is light yet weighty, crude yet resilient. Oscillating between passivity and activity, indifference and diligence, self-mockery and hope, Jung’s position is that of an observant participant—one who maintains a certain distance from the world, yet is more deeply engaged than it may initially appear.
 
The fictional world populated by numerous small moving objects comes to an end with the exhibition 《gomjumsum》. As both the culmination of his early work and a transitional moment toward his later practice, 《gomjumsum》 functions as a critical turning point. By reusing temporary walls from previous exhibitions to construct a dramatic, autonomous space and densely filling it with earlier works, the exhibition takes on the character of a farewell stage.

Moving through and around the space, viewers repeatedly shift between close-up and distant perspectives across works of vastly different scales. Small objects placed on display shelves require the viewer to bend down and look closely, while distant views glimpsed through openings in the partitioned walls demand a broader gaze.

Like an opera, this exhibition brings together proximity and distance in a single dramatic composition. With this exhibition, Jung departs from dark, theatrical spatial staging, narrative, and movement. While movement had previously been introduced as a means of altering the function of objects, its visually captivating effect risked reducing the works to theatrical props, inadvertently rendering the act of viewing momentary and fleeting.

Rather than encouraging slow and sustained viewing, the works tend to be glanced at and passed over. In response, Jung shifts away from physically cutting and assembling objects toward deriving transformation through variations in material, surface treatment, and fabrication techniques. This trajectory—from landscape to object—is evident in the exhibition 《ONE-A-DAY》.

Here, Jung’s objects at times resemble the abstract paintings of Seeun Kim exhibited alongside them, while at other moments they contain painting within themselves. Objects function simultaneously as independent sculptures and as frames through which painting is perceived, or as screens that obscure painting while becoming color-field compositions in their own right.

This method of responding to the environment—forming a landscape together with it and effectively “drawing” space—is less artificial, yet still constitutes a form of spatial staging. Unlike his earlier works, which adhered to predetermined plans, this staging becomes improvisational and provisional, more akin to sketching.

At the same time, his objects cease to function as stage props and instead exist autonomously alongside painting as independent sculptures. With their emphasis on volume, mass, and scale, these objects begin to pose questions to themselves as fully realized sculptural entities.
 
The exhibition that formally marked this shift is 《Multipurpose Henry》 (Atelier Hermès, 2019). Together with 《Gouge》 (Incheon Art Platform, 2022), it serves as a key point encompassing Jung’s later practice, announcing a transition from the construction of meticulously staged environments to experiments within the sculptural medium itself.

The majority of the works take the form of mass-bearing volumes, the use of discarded materials is significantly reduced, and minimal intervention is employed to alter the properties of objects. This shift is particularly evident in 《Gouge》, where automated technologies such as 3D scanning and 3D printing are integrated into sculpture, reinterpreting traditional sculptural practices.

Processes such as sanding, dividing, shifting viewpoints, stacking, casting surfaces, altering materials, and outputting forms—interventions that strike lightly and withdraw, like jabs—are playful yet incisive. For instance, Boots, which presents the inverted leg of a mascot figure, employs both sanding and division. Properties typically concealed in conventional sculptural practice are here exposed.

The multicolored surface of Boots, reminiscent of layered painterly surfaces, results from sanding down the FRP coating and putty applied to conceal the raw color of the 3D-printed object. The inverted leg is constructed from stacked segments slightly misaligned, and although such elements are usually disguised in finished sculpture, here the seams are inadvertently revealed through the gaps created by this rough stacking. Swept (2022), which appears broad from the front yet flat from the side, points to the impossibility of fully apprehending a sculpture from a single viewpoint.

Meanwhile, Torso from Afar (2022), produced by segmenting and printing scan data from Aristide Maillol’s La Rivière (1943), addresses the disjunction between surface and interior. Each of these works gently “pokes at the flank” of sculpture from different angles. The resistance is not overt, but it is sharp enough to leave a sting.
 
Recent tendencies in Jung’s practice—approaching the question of what sculpture is in a relatively direct manner—suggest a movement back from installation toward sculpture. Despite these shifts, his distinctive sensibility remains pronounced. Myall River (2019), a urethane foam cast of the artist’s body dressed in work clothes, appears as a degraded version of the modern sculptural masterpiece La Rivière.

The sudden burst of laughter that arises upon seeing light flash and smoke billow behind this crude figure with awkwardly raised arms is difficult to suppress. This unmistakable “B-grade” sensibility is not unlike the earlier works in which rusted cans produced artificial wave sounds.

Works such as the flimsy Styrofoam boat in Nobody Knows Where (2012), the motorized object Night Walker, which appears intact from the front but reveals a melodramatic phrase on its reverse (“the tears I have shed for you”), and Filing Public Hands (2018), in which stolen hands from public statues are piled like fish in a concrete mass, all share a subtle yet consistent mode of quiet subversion. At the same time, repetition—though less conspicuous—persists.

As emphasis shifts from action to form, repetition becomes less explicit, yet the differences generated through sustained iteration remain central. The variations produced in 《Haengdog》 (2023), itself a reiteration of 《Gauji》, are particularly compelling. Torso from Afar, originally shown in 《Gauji》, is repeated three times in 《Haengdog》—first as it is, then as a fragment, and finally through a change in color. It becomes From Afar (2023), and then Far (2022).

The outer shell, which coexisted with its support, disappears in the second iteration, while the exposed inner sponge undergoes yellowing in the third. As replication is repeated, differences expand, and as the form distances itself from the original, the title also progressively departs from its source. This increasingly crude and distant landscape of “farther and farther away” resonates with Jung’s practice, which continually questions itself while boldly challenging tradition and the world.
 
It is striking to observe how Jung’s repetition—originating from the simple intuition that “it seems better to do something than to do nothing”—generates difference rather than sameness. Repetition occurs relentlessly within individual works, between works, and across exhibitions. The differences that emerge through this process invert function, meaning, and material properties.

Judith Butler’s insight—that performative acts constitute the subject—seems particularly apt in Jung’s case. All of the objects he produces are the result of persistent making, regardless of outcome, and his identity as a maker—along with his sense of pride and affection—emerges from this quiet and sustained practice.

References

• [비평] 조각의 옆구리를 슬쩍 찌르기: 있는 듯 없는 듯 부지런한 정지현의 사물들
  [Critique] Poking at the Flank of Sculpture: The Diligent Yet Elusive Objects of Jihyun Jung