"I
dream a lot" says Hyunsun Jeon.
In
her paintings, she tries to capture the diffuse feelings that persist when you
wake up, when what remains of your dreams are impressions, colours and hybrid
shapes – impossible syntheses of real memories. But Jeon's painting, however
dreamlike, is above all driven by a concrete quest: what is an image, what is
representation?
In
altar paintings from the 15th century found in Italy and the Netherlands, the
window opens onto a landscape and tells a story that complements or illustrates
the main scene. In the 20th century, Matisse turned it into an allegory of
painting itself; each painting is an open window onto the artist's inner world.
In Jeon's work, the window divides the composition and allows different levels
of reading and interpretation. The subjects that unfold here are rooted in her
memory and imagination. Memories of fairytales, taken from her more figurative
paintings of 10 or 15 years earlier, appear here in singular effects of colour
and material.
The
jerky contours reveal Jeon's interest in pixelization. The images that have
surrounded us for the last thirty years are essentially digital. From the late
1980s to the early 2000s, they were characterised by imprecise outlines and an
initially limited number of squares (pixels), which increased steadily as
technology advanced. When she was younger, Hyunsun Jeon saw her video games as
forms and spaces structured by pixels, which she now recreates by superimposing
images and materials. On the canvas, the geometric figures and flat areas of
colour reveal the technical process that produced them: it becomes the very
subject of the painting.
This
deconstruction and reconstruction of the digital image is at the heart of the
concerns of a new generation of painters. Jeon's exploration of the limits of
representation extends to the question of the concrete arrangement of the
painting in its space. She has developed the habit of assembling her paintings
into wall-mounted or freestanding structures, without this becoming a
constraint, as she also allows each work to be viewed and hung individually.
Placed upright on the floor, the paintings are hinged together and resemble
screens. On the wall, paintings in different formats are juxtaposed in a
staggered, off-centre way, reinforcing the distancing effect. The title,
"Here and There", evokes the different planes within the paintings,
from near to far, as well as the contrast between the space of the viewer and
that of the painting: "here" designating the actual place, that of
the exhibition, and "there" referring to the imaginary universe
unfurled on the surface of the painting.
This
is the artist's first solo exhibition in France. Hyunsun Jeon has been featured
in several group exhibitions in Korea (Seoul Museum of Art, 2023; Songeun,
2023; Leeum Museum, 2022), and the galleries Gallery2 (Seoul) and Esther
Schipper (Berlin) have given her solo exhibitions. She was one of three
finalists for the Jean-François Prat prize in Paris in 2024. In 2025, she was
chosen for a commission for the Hermès showcase in Seoul (The Forest of
Drawing, curated by Hye Jo Yum and Karlee Han), and next October, several of
her paintings will be included in Colors of Korea, a group exhibition at the
Korean Cultural Centre in Paris.
Born
in 1989 in Seoul, she lives and works on Jeju Island (South Korea).
