Biography
Born in 1979 in Gwangju, South Korea.
Lives and works in France.
A light mist that spreads to immediately disappear or an imposing shape that envelops, suffocates, devours… Nothing is static in the extremely delicate world of Min Jung-Yeon. Nothing is completely real and nothing is completely imaginary either. Her works resembles scenic, frontal compositions, where, when looking at them, one holds one’s breath in order to see what happens next. The works are the expression of the artist’s intimate being and her belonging to a contemporary history.
Min Jung-Yeon’s profound interest in sciences, specifically the exploration of space, is linked to her intense observation of nature since childhood. She is also very attached to her origins, a Korea torn between consumerism and tradition, where the shamanistic heritage is still deeply rooted. Drawings, paintings, volumes, installations – Min Jung-Yeon is at ease in every dimension, from the infinitely small to the monumental.
Exhibitions
Mais le paysage est encore là (But the landscape is still there)
Min Jung-Yeon
27. 01 > 18. 03. 2023
An all time metaphor, Min Jung-Yeon’s landscapes evolve with her.
Her work took on a new fluidity and a powerful gesturality with the creation of her monumental installation Tissage, which was presented at the MNAAG – Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet in 2019-2020. An energy was released and now contributes its impetus, sometimes violent, sometimes like a gentle exhalation. The compositions, once entirely thought out, now go with the flow, closely coexisting with the thoroughness of which the artist is capable. Opposites and their struggles, recurring subjects in her work, have melted into an intimate embrace, if not a face-off.
Dawn after night
Min Jung-Yeon
13. 03. – 09. 05. 2020
Must one dive into obscurity to know, embrace, and finally be able to (re)capture the light? That is what Min Jung-Yeon seems to suggest with the title of her new show : L’aube après la nuit (Dawn after night).
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.
Pluto’s letter
Min Jung-Yeon
06.03. – 28.04.2018
In 2006, Pluto was excluded from the solar system and was downgraded to the status of “dwarf planet” because of its mass and its volume, both too little, and a “deviant” trajectory. The first images of Pluto sent by the New Horizons probe (2015) revealed a surface partly covered in methane and nitrogen ice, which, at one spot, was shaped like a heart. Min Jung-Yeon was inspired by the symbolism of this rejection of a small different planet with a heart of ice. Thus, Pluto’s letter explores the notion of reconciliation with loss, integration of what escapes our understanding, of other viewpoints and assessments.
Off site
Korean Cultural Center
Désert plein – soif, sommeil, silence
29. 11. 2022 – 11. 03. 2023
The exhibition is part of a collaboration between the Centre Culturel Coréen, the MNAAG – Musée National des arts asiatiques – Guimet and the Galerie Maria Lund, initiated on the occasion of the Carte blanche offered to Min Jung-Yeon at the MNAAG in 2019-2020.
Min Jung-Yeon invites us to a dreamlike world which is nevertheless closely linked to our own. Her monumental and immersive installation Tissage (Weave), presented at the MNAAG in 2019-2020, dealt with memory and reconciliation in the symbolic form of a forest with unfathomable depths. Since then, her work has developed a new fluidity to evoke the perpetual movement of our reality.
Musée Guimet
Carte Blanche to Min Jung-Yeon
06.11.2019 – 17.02.2020
This new contemporary Carte Blanche, entrusted to the Korean artist MIN Jung-yeon, presents an immersive and organic installation specifically created for the MNAAG. Inspired by the reality of a country split in two for the past 65 years and the idea of reconciliation, the installation consists of large-format drawings and birch trunks drawn on paper.
Like a huge kaleidoscope, the plays of mirrors offer the eye a subtle superimposed interweaving. Her philosophical approach to time, memory, and space arises from the harmonious blending of the organic with fluidity.
Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Etienne Métropole
Demander le chemin à mes chaussures
Min Jung-Yeon
23. 06 – 30. 09. 2012
“Vanishing lines that taper off into infinity, organic-looking forms suspended in space, unnameable strange clusters that refer to nothing or very little, then suddenly a perfectly identifiable element.
[…] In both her paintings and her drawings, Jung-Yeon Min’s work is full of a strange world that mixes biological, plant, animal and human references to inform an aesthetic in which the body, if it is not explicit, acts notably as a liberating medium of the creative act, a substitute for excessive control and for stopping breathing.” Philippe Piguet in Min Jung-Yeon, Demander le chemin à mes chaussures, MAMC+ Saint-Etienne Métropole, 2012.
Press
Publications and texts
Contemporary voices from the Asian and Islamic art worlds
Olivia Sand, SKIRA, 2018
The publication includes a conversation with Min Jung-Yeon.
“Dreamy, Grotesque and Surreal: Into the Deep Subconscious of Min Jung-Yeon” (in French)
Video
Chat Room – ASIA NOW – 18. 10. 2019
With Sophie Makariou, Director of the musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, Min Jung-Yeon, artist, and Maria Lund, gallerist. Moderated by Olivia Sand, journalist for the Asian Art Newspaper and author of the book “Contemporary Voices from the Asian and Islamic Art Worlds”.
Min Jung-Yeon talks about her Carte blanche exhibition at Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet
video
11. 2019 – 02. 2020
The notion of reconciliation is at the heart of Min Jung-Yeon’s installation.
The work draws on the artist’s experience and the tragic reality of a Korea split in two for the last sixty-six years.
Min Jung-Yeon refers to Lao-Tseu’s thoughts on contraries and she also draws inspiration from contemporary research and quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli’s considerations on time and space.